Autoethnography

While I'm pondering the nature of my action research, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) project for the OER Fellows commitment, I've been reading about autoethnographical research. This form of academic inquiry fits this purpose and my style, but as I'm reading, several BIG questions and ideas are coming to light.

I've just finished reading 'Easier Said Than Done: Writing an Autoethnography by Sarah Wall (2008). In this work she shares her experiences in writing an autoethnographic work. The acceptability of her writing to the formal and informal reviewers, for both academic and journal publications caught my attention. Since I can anticipate that my story about open educational practices could become published works or potentially lead to further academic research, I will need to attend to some of the issues outlined by Wall.

An autoethnography, as outlined by Ellis (2000), should

• fully engage a reader in the flow of the story
• offer something new understandings of the context of the story
• share discoveries and author's insights 

Wall shares a realization that her work would need to "connect my personal experiences explicitly to relevant theory and 'legitimate' method". These are words of caution for me as I venture into self reflection about course design, open teaching methodologies, and sharing in open spaces.

Sources of data for autoethnographies were explored. These include interviews, observational field notes, documents, artifact analysis, research diaries, records, articles, letters, personal notes. The artifacts that are of most interest to me include reflective journals, emails, memos and sketches. Memories are also valid for autoethnographies. The notion of "head notes" was something new that caught my attention. Wall states that "headnotes are more important than field notes". With a reference to Margaret Mead, it speaks to my position in this SoTL work I'm attempting to capture - long acquaintance with her field of study and her 'lived consciousness' where she can "perceive and record aspects of lived experience that nobody else could".

Next Steps:

• more reading about autoethnography
• examine what data and/or artifacts should I be collecting? - i.e. tweets with/from students?
• continue sketch-noting observations and readings as artifacts of reflection in the open

References:

Ellis, C. (2000). Creating criteria: An ethnographic short story. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(2), 273-
277.

Wall, S. (2008). Easier said than done: Writing an autoethnography. International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, University of Alberta. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/160940690800700103