Using LatCrit, Autoethnography, and Counterstory to Teach About and Resist Latina/o Nihilism

Nihilism caused by inequalities and injustices hurts students of color. Educators can help these students with Critical Race theory and storytelling. Latina/o students also face nihilism but there is no clear solution. This study explores a way to use LatCrit in the K-12 classroom to fight for justice and equality.

Analyzing Stories from Canadian Academic Writing Instructors: A Collaborative Autoethnography

Writing instruction in Canadian universities takes a variety of forms. While there are few formal departments for writing studies, many institutions do have a writing centre – a place that offers writing instruction to varying degrees. The writing centre may be housed within a department, a library, or within a student services unit. Its position within a university may indicate the degree to which writing is valued by the administrative body. The goal of our paper is to share insights into the ways that writing professionals perceive, work in, and adapt to current demands for writing instruction in higher education. Using a collaborative ethnographic approach, three scholars at different career stages explore their experiences with writing centre work. Using data consisting of individually written reflections, our analysis revealed four major themes: (a) initial experience with writing centres, (b) community, (c) frustrations and tensions at work, and (d) mentorship. In this paper, we discuss our findings within the framework of positioning theory in order to understand how we position ourselves as scholars, mentors, and educators, and how we are positioned by others within the fields of writing studies and higher education. This study raises awareness about the value of writing centre professionals’ contributions, the place of mentorship within higher education, and the support required for continued writing centre work.

Hysterical inquiry and autoethnography : a Lacanian alternative to institutionalised ethical commandments

A feminist post-transsexual autoethnography on challenging normative gender coercion

This in-depth analysis of the autoethnographic subject's life has shed considerable light on the transgender condition, particularly in terms of improving their social determinates of health, psychological wellbeing, agency and in leading more creative livable lives. It also sheds considerable light on the normative operation of gender in society.

Personal notions of time travel: reflections on love, loss, and growth through autoethnography

Using the concept of time travel as a contextual and narrative tool, the author explores themes of love, loss and growth after trauma. Reflections relate primarily to the experience of conducting the qualitative research method of autoethnography. Opening with consideration of existing work (Yoga and Loss: An Autoethnographical Exploration of Grief, Mind, and Body), discussion moves on to academic thought on mental time travel, and personal transformation, culminating in the construction of a new memory combining past, present, and future.

A collaborative autoethnography study to inform the teaching of reflective practice in STEM

The paper explores a collaborative self-study, autoethnography research project, which aided in informing practice for the teaching of reflective practice in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) at an Australian university. Self-report methods were used, because it enabled the collection of a variety of self-awareness data generated processes to help produce insights and understandings. This was achieved by undertaking a systematic approach to the exploration of a critical friendship between two academic support staff members alongside reflections from a recorded, focus group interview with nine STEM teachers. Four self-awareness data generated processes were used: (1) self-reflections; (2) collaborative reflections; (3) reflections on pertinent literature findings and (4) reflections from nine STEM teachers. A thematic analysis of the data was undertaken, which resulted in the discovery of three turning points such as moments of understandings that challenge assumptions and/or lead to new insights. The findings indicated that a STEM-centric, scaffolded approach that utilised the scientific method for reflective practice enabled the development of a shared understanding around teaching and assessing reflective practice for STEM teachers. First, because it boosted self-confidence and second, because it reduced scepticism around reflective practice as a non-scientific form of learning.

A Feminist post-transsexual autoethnography on challenging normative gender coercion.

This in-depth analysis of the autoethnographic subject's life has shed considerable light on the transgender condition, particularly in terms of improving their social determinates of health, psychological wellbeing, agency and in leading more creative livable lives. It also sheds considerable light on the normative operation of gender in society.

On this Writing : An Autotheoretic Account

An invited chapter that provides an autobiographical account of 'critical incidents' in becoming an academic writer.

Voices of the Unheard

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. Horace - Roman lyric poet and satirist 65BC – 8 BC This quotation from Horace could well be the chorus to a medley of songs sung by people who face extraordinary adversity and have gained emotional resilience through music making. In this chapter we present three composition ventures that are stories or verses in a new song and whose chorus summarises the nature of the resilience factors present in the narratives. We are aware that words on a page like this can have the effect of filtering out the engaging nature of musical experience and reduce music to a critique or an evaluation of its aesthetic value. This disjuncture between language and the ephemeral, embodied experience is a problem for those who use these creative processes in therapeutic and salutogenic ways (Antonovsky, 1996) for public health. The notion of salutogenic health, put simply, delineates it from therapy in that the processes focus upon wellness rather than therapy. Whilst we include evidence from the fields of community music therapy (Pavlicevic, 2004; Leitschuh et al., 1991), neuroscience (Bittman et al., 2001) and community music (Bartleet et al., 2009) the framework for a salutogenic health outcome in community music is one which seeks to employ music practices and the qualities of music making that provide positive health benefit to communities –to enhance health and well being rather than the “treatment” of disorders. It is essentially a holistic and interdisciplinary study. Therapy and salutogenic health are not mutually exclusive as both depend upon the qualities of music experience to affect change. Collecting, analysing and presenting evidence of change in human behaviour that can be directly attributed to creative music making is a problem of evaluation.

My career chapter as a tool for reflective practice

This paper addresses reflective practice in research and practice and takes the issue of consciousness of social class in vocational psychology as a working example. It is argued that the discipline’s appreciation of social class can be advanced through application of the qualitative research method autoethnography. Excerpts from an autoethnographic study are used to explore the method’s potential. This reflexive research method is presented as a potential vehicle to improve vocational psychologists’ own class consciousness, and to concomitantly enhance their capacity to grasp social class within their own spheres of research and practice. It is recommended that autoethnography be used for research, training, and professional development for vocational psychologists.

Anchoring and exposing in the third place : regular identification at the boundaries of social realms

Harry’s is my favourite bar in my neighbourhood. It is a small wine bar, owned by three men in their late thirties and targeted at people like them; my gentrifying inner city neighbourhood’s 20 to 40 something urban middle class. Harry’s has seats along the bar, booths inside, and a courtyard out the back. The seating arrangements mean that larger groups tend to gather outside, groups of two to four spread around the location, and people by themselves, or in groups of two, tend to sit at the bar. I usually sit at the bar....

Intercultural dance : exploring a Finnish migrant connection with indigenous cultures through dance

This research is a dance-based, autoethnographic study which explores my connection with place as a Savolainen woman born on Kalkadoon country; an Australian-born Finn. Edward Relph states 'the more profoundly inside a place the person feels, the stronger will be his or her identity with that place' (1976, 49). I am interested in how a sense of "place identity" has informed my choreographic practice. Autoethnography is important because it places the research within a lived experience: my insider account of a lived experience within the White Australia Policy through my lens as a first generation Australian-born Finn. It also speaks to the space in-between for those, like me, who feel they do not fit into mainstream identity but look like they do. By exploring my lived experience through dance autoethnography, new understandings of my place identity within a cultural, social and political context have emerged. Ellis and Flaherty state ‘subjectivity is situated such that the voices in our heads and the feelings in our bodies are linked to political, cultural, and historical contexts’ (1992, 4). In order to begin my rehearsal process, I wanted a cultural framework which related to connection with land to guide the research. My investigations led me to the Maori examples of "Tikanga Maori" (Tikanga are the customs and traditions), in particular the "Pepeha" (Introduction) and allowed me to challenge my choreographic practice through this cultural framework.

The human cost of change : tales from the campus about personal change fatigue, resistance, and resilience

For the last decade, one question has haunted me: what helps people to cope with large-scale organisational change in their workplace? This study explores the construct of personal change resilience, and its potential for identifying solutions to the problems of change fatigue and change resistance. The thesis has emerged from the fields of change management, leadership, training, mentoring, evaluation, management and trust within the context of higher education in Australia at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this thesis I present a theoretical model of the factors to consider in increasing peoples’ personal change resilience as they navigate large-scale organisational change at work, thereby closing a gap in the literature on the construct of change resilience. The model presented is based on both the literature in the realms of business and education, and on the findings of the research. In this thesis, an autoethnographic case study of two Australian university projects is presented as one narrative, resulting in a methodological step forward in the use of multiple research participants’ stories in the development of a single narrative. The findings describe the experiences of workers in higher education and emphasise the importance of considerate management in the achievement of positive experiences of organisational change. This research makes a significant contribution to new knowledge in three ways. First, it closes a gap in the literature in the realm of change management around personal change resilience as a solution to the problem of change fatigue by presenting models of both change failure and personal change resilience. Second, it is methodologically innovative in the use of personae to tell the stories of multiple participants in one coherent tale presented as a work of ethnographic fiction seen through an autoethnographic lens. By doing so, it develops a methodology for giving a voice to those to whom change is done in the workplace. Third, it provides a perspective on organisational change management from the view of the actual workers affected by change, thereby adding to the literature that currently exists, which is based on the views of those with responsibility for leading or managing change rather than those it affects. This thesis is intended as a practical starting point for conversations by actual change managers in higher education, and it is written in such a way as to help them see how theory can be applied in real life, and how empowering and enabling the actual working staff members, and engaging with them in a considerate way before, during and even after the change process, can help to make them resilient enough to cope with the change, rather than leaving them burned out or disengaged and no longer a well-functioning member of the institution. This thesis shows how considerately managed large-scale organisational change can result in positive outcomes for both the organisation and the individuals who work in it.

Transition: Exchange establishing a visual arts practice based on personal pedagogy

There is a perceived tension in the relationship between the roles of art teacher and artist that led to the question: can an art teacher use their professional training and experience to establish an authentic artistic identity? This self-study tracked and analysed how the process of making her own art enabled an art teacher to also identify as an artist. Drawing on Lamina, the public exhibition of her multimedia artworks, the final exegesis proposes five conditions for art teachers in developing their own art practice: developing an identity as artist, using time and space mindfully, tolerating uncertainty, mentoring, and privileging the process.