This document discusses autoethnographic research methods. It describes how the author's research question emerged from her experience teaching communications in community college and needing to adapt to new computer and web technologies. It outlines how narrative inquiry and arts-based approaches allowed her to reflexively explore her personal experiences learning about and teaching with these new technologies. The document also discusses some of the internal and external challenges she faced in conducting this type of research.

2. Autoethnographic
Research
Joan Vinall-Cox, Ph.D.

3. Contents
‣ Epistemological background and validity
‣ The question finds me
‣ Discovering my methods
‣ Internal and external obstacles
‣ Necessary to learn
‣ Context

4. Beginnings
• Primary field - teaching communications in a
Community College
• Classroom - a cultural setting with own
norms of behavior
• Action research
• Participant observation
• Dewey - study experience
• Russell - “knowledge by acquaintance”

5. “The Personal is Political”
• Postmodern theory - impossible to be
objective, significance of the personal
experience
• Feminist theory -> doubt the possibility of
actual objectivity; people always see from
where they are
• Narrative Inquiry
• Tell and ‘unpack’ stories
• Ethnography - personal, participatory,
cultural research

6. Narrative Inquiry
• John Dewey - experience is both personal
and social
‣ Dewey, J. (1963). Experience and education. New York: Collier Books.
• Narrative - human way of learning - answers
why? Plot = meaning
• teaching = “expressions of embodied and
individual and social stories”
‣ Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000).Narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative
research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers p.4
• Teaching - in new culture of computer and
web -> personal and social cultural changes

7. Autoethnographic Research
• Reflexivity - exploring both cause and effect in
an emerging classroom culture
• Connect personal to cultural, political, and
social meanings / understandings
• Wanted to be present in my research, not
‘detached’ (postmodern approach)
• Explore my experiences in learning to learn
from my experience of learning to use
computers & web
• Open up readers’ consciousness of own
experiences -> deepen, speed up learning

8. Arts-Based
• Humans interpret signs -> construct
meanings
• “[W]e see what we know how to see; we perceive
what we have learned how to perceive.”
‣ Vinall-Cox, J. (2004). Following the thread: a writing teacher's memories and arts-based transition to
a new technology of meaning-making. Toronto: Online.
• Materiality of research object - “show and
tell” computer’s visual and creative
possibilities
• Messy, multiple processes of learning -
“voices”

9. www. scribd.com/doc/2063617/Following-
the-Thread-A-New-Technology

10. Showing and Telling

14. Context
• College professor teaching English
• Students often reluctant, fearful
• Students grouped by programs
(Multiple Intelligences)
• Forced into a new communications
environment - the computer and web
• PhD looking at computer use teaching
writing - late in career = freedom

15. Challenge
• Early 90’s, assigned a course using computers
• Hated DOS, technophobic, but only way to
stay with the program I liked teaching in
• Reluctant but knew techies I could get help
from
• Knew I could cope when I had to learn
something in order to teach it

16. Learning! Socially
• Survived the first iteration of Communications
Using a Computer
• Determined to know more about web
• Institution provided workshops and courses
• Joined PD committee in order to learn from
more knowledgeable members
• My coordinator was very supportive

17. Learning! Culture
• Laptops introduced into program
• Became aware of
• growing impact of computer and web on
our culture
• learning demands for using this new tool
• Needed to know more about how to learn
to use the tool, and how to teach it

18. Learning! Environment

19. A Whole New Technology

20. The Question Finds Me
• The more I learned
• The more I recognized a fundamental
development in communications and
consequently in human culture.
• Chirography >>> history, religion, etc.
• Printing >>> politics, Enlightenment,
• Digital and web >/> unknowable and moving
fast

21. Ph.D. Candidate, 2002:
Method
• “In research, the methodology used is profoundly
affected by the question posed and the question is
shaped the choice of the method. What fascinates me,
what I want to explore, is my personal experience of
learning to write, and to teach writing, using the online
computer as a writing and teaching tool”.

22. I Discover my Method;
My Method Discovers Me.
• M.Ed - OISE - Teacher-centered
• Curriculum Basics - Dr. Connelly
• Narrative Inquiry - Experience and Story
in Qualitative Research
Discovered I get it!
The way my mind works!

23. Observations While Teaching
• Many poor writers appeared intuitive in
‘getting’ computer skills
• Computers made visual teaching easier
• Many initially computer-naive students
blossomed when they saw how helpful
computer skills could be for their work!
• Because I was still new and learning, I knew
how to show a step-at-a-time as a teacher

24. Pedagogical Positions
• Aware of impact of dyslexia and other
learning differences
• Found Gardner’s Theory of Multiple
Intelligences convincing
• Followed a Constructivist approach for
teaching language
• Used scaffolding and the “Zone of Proximal
Development” in curriculum development

25. Web Observations
• Hear students speak of monthly Skyping to
home countries to visit with families
• Discover a Listserv - communicate with
people with similar interest from around the
world!
• Wikipedia!!!!
• Web sites
• WebCT
• Wikispaces

26. My First Website

27. Return to U of T
• Fascinated by computer and web
• Aware I’d gone from technophobia to
technophilia
• Aware that digital skills would become
universally necessary
• Found ‘worthy’ research - to impact learning
by telling stories with computer knowledge
embedded in them

28. Speed of Change

29. Sense of Urgency
2002
• Give workshops to fellow PhD candidates
• Generating a Table of Contents / Figures
• Want to “show and tell” - want teacher-
readers to “get” the possibilities ASAP
• Want teachers to to learn to use computers
& web ASAP

30. Discovering My Methods
• Read more about, and examples of,
Narrative Inquiry
Took a course on Arts-Based work (and
asked prof, Pat Diamond, to be my Ph.D.
supervisor)
• Read about ethnography - Laurel
Richardson’s Fields of Play: Constructing an
Academic Life

31. Internal Hesitations
• Before my studies, I had assumed that
qualitative research was the only “valid”
approach to research
• I knew qualitative research was often seen
as “subjective”
• I had low interest in a quantitative approach
(too few teachers of writing using
computers to interview)
• I wanted to be scholarly (Ended up with 10
pages in my References)

32. External Problems
• School-provided laptops - switched from
Windows to Mac partway through thesis
• New copy of EndNote needed
• Slow acceptance of fellow teachers in
learning computer / web skills

33. Rational Choice
• I wanted to demonstrate the impact of the
computer, to show my path as a scaffold to
help others want to learn the computer and
web in teaching (especially writing)
• My Question:
“I seek to investigate the impact of the online computer
on composing and teaching, penetrating to the core of
the labyrinth of what it means to be a teacher of writing
in this computer-mediated age.”

34. Necessary to Learn
• Computer not typewriter with spell-checker
• Needed to know
• about fonts and graphic design
• how to generate Tables of
Contents/Figures
• how to use EndNote (or Zotero)
• how to use Diigo or Evernote
• how to “insert” and other word
processing skills

35. Conclusions
‣ The methods shape the research
‣ The context of my teaching, learning and
studying shaped my choice of methods
‣ For my investigation, Arts-Based,
Autoethnographic, and Narrative Inquiry
approaches made sense and gave me space
to explore and learn what I needed to learn
‣ Conclusion = my “union of passion and
insight mediated by technology” was worthy
research