Self-Reflection in Teaching: Considerations on the Transformative Potential of Autoethnography

34 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 Self-Reflection in Teaching: Considerations on the Transformative Potential of Autoethnography Diego Luna1, José Antonio Pineda-Alfonso2, Francisco F. García-Pérez3, Conceição Leal da Costa4 ¹ University of Seville, Faculty of Education Sciences, Pirotecnia St., no number, ES-41013 Seville, Spain, [email protected] 2 University of Seville, Faculty of Education Sciences, Pirotecnia St., no number, ES-41013 Seville, Spain, [email protected] 3 University of Seville, Faculty of Education Sciences, Pirotecnia St., no number, ES-41013 Seville, Spain, [email protected] 4 University of Évora, Center of Research in Education and Psychology, 1 Barba Rala St., PRT-7005-345 Évora, Portugal, [email protected] Annotation. This paper explores the potential of autoethnography in teaching by developing a theoretical framework, presenting a case study, and discussing three alleged problems: excess subjectivism, observer bias, and lack of rigor. The described research experience shows that autoethnography functions as an element of ideological resistance, memory, and self-discovery in educational contexts. Keywords: autoethnography, teaching professional identity, narrative documentation, secondary teaching, case study. Introduction The emergence of narrative methodologies that incorporate a narrative and self-reflective component (De Souza et al., 2021) is indicative of the current era, where learning opportunities are increasingly widespread and diverse. In this context, narrative is not only a familiar tool for researchers and subjects, but also a valuable strategy of investigating the impact of educational proposals and phenomena. ISSN 1392-0340 (Print) ISSN 2029-0551 (Online) https://doi.org/10.15823/p.2023. 151 .2 Pedagogika / Pedagogy 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3, p. 34–51 / Vol. 151, No. 3, pp. 34–51, 2023 35 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 Despite this, autoethnography has received relatively little attention in scientific literature, compared to other approaches such as histoires de vie or autobiography (Rodríguez Illera & Annacontini, 2019). This lack of visibility is surprising, given the works of authors such as Montero-Sieburth (2007) or Starr (2010), who advocate for self-analysis as a means of understanding the complexity of pedagogical and intercultural interactions. Similarly, Varpio et al. (2012), from the field of medical education, have highlighted the usefulness of autoethnography in identifying the changes in the theoretical foundations of Team-Based Learning (TBL) when implemented in practice. Special attention should be given to the works of Rivera García (2012) and Monetti (2014), who utilized autoethnography to reflect on their respective teaching trajectories. Leal da Costa and Sarmento (2019) emphasized the significance of teacher-student interactions in understanding identity reconfiguration processes, while Suárez and Metzdorff (2018) and Suárez (2021) highlighted the utility of “narrative documentation” for reconstructing one’s own teaching practice. In recent years, a group of American authors has also advocated for the use of autoethnography, particularly in the research of trainee teacher experiences (Branyon et al., 2016; Diacopoulos & Butler, 2020; Gregory et al., 2017). They have utilized “self-study” as a platform to build processes of “co/autoethnographic self-study” (Butler & Diacopoulos, 2016; Chróinín et al., 2015). In the following pages, the potential of autoethnography as a research strategy will be explored. Firstly, a theoretical framework will be developed outlining the method’s most general features, as described by some of its primary proponents. Secondly, a case study that utilized autoethnography as its main methodological strategy will be presented. Finally, the aspects that have generated controversy among authors will be discussed, and some conclusions will be proposed based on research experience. Autoethnography Origins and General Definition According to Bolívar and Domingo Segovia (2019), the use of biographical narratives to explain social realities dates back to the “hermeneutic turn” promoted by figures such as Gadamer in the 1970s. Faced with postmodern disillusionment with the great legitimising narratives of knowledge (Lyotard, [1979] 2012), small life narratives represented the meanings contributed by the actors, and were therefore a vindication of personal interpretation and understanding as opposed to any kind of absolute explanation. As Guerrero Muñoz (2016) has pointed out, the term autoethnography was pioneered in the works published by Heider and Hayano in the late 1970s, although it was not until the beginning of the 21st century that autoethnography, as a research practice, 36 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 was finally vindicated. Since then, numerous authors have discovered the potential of this methodological and epistemological resource, which is particularly relevant in the context of educational research. Autoethnography represents “an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness” (Ellis, 2004, p. 37), aiming to articulate “a holistic and organic communication of a phenomenon irreducible to its particular components” (Elías Hernández, 2018, p. 5). To achieve this, autoethnography pursues a creative hybridization of research and literary approaches, a crossover from which its heuristic potential emerges. However, will be seen shortly, autoethnography’s detractors still have reservations about this approach: I am both the author and focus of the story, the one who tells and the one who experiences, the observer and the observed, the creator and the created. I am the person at the intersection of the personal and the cultural, thinking and observing as an ethnographer and writing and describing as a storyteller (Ellis, 2016, p.13). According to Guerrero Muñoz (2014; 2016; 2019), the distinctive feature of autoethnography is its focus on promoting intuition, creativity, spontaneity, self-awareness, and self-discovery, in order to facilitate critical self-reflection in the researcher about their own role as an active agent in a given sociocultural practice. Feliu (2007) identified two axes around which the practice of autoethnography is configured: the first from the sociocultural to the personal realm, and the second from realism to fiction. Each author, as Feliu noted, may occupy a particular position along these axes, depending on the degree of sociocultural/personal content and the realist/fictionalized focus of their research. This axial map thus allows for differentiation between authors whose work tends more towards theoretical propositions, and those who, like Bochner or Ellis, are more inclined to assert emotionality and subjectivity. Following this logic, Feliu (2007, p. 267) himself conceived of autoethnography as one of the “Creative Analytic Practices” – using the acronym “PAC” proposed by Richardson (2000) – to designate those analytical practices that blend the language of art with that of the social sciences and aim to produce social knowledge through a creative practice. Three Attributes of Autoethnography According to the authors referenced below (Elías Hernández, 2018; Ellis, 2004; Feliu, 2007; Guerrero Muñoz, 2014; 2016; 2019), as well as the previous research experience (Luna et al., 2022a; 2022b), autoethnography is characterized by three fundamental attributes: its dependence on fieldwork, the reflexive component it stimulates through narration, and its ability to foster cross-observation of the personal and socio-cultural spheres. While the first attribute of fieldwork is shared with ethnography, the observation in autoethnography is combined with participation and interaction, which facilitates access to a meaningful understanding of the phenomenon being analysed. As Celigueta and 37 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 Solé (2014) point out, there are as many fieldworks as there are ethnographers, and the flexibility to adapt to the context is crucial to fully utilize the methodological potential of autoethnography. This adaptation to the context may involve a direct relationship between the researcher’s personal relationships with the research subjects and the research’s progress as the fieldwork evolves. The second attribute of autoethnography is its emphasis on reflexivity. As the researcher is also the narrator of their own experience (Guerrero Muñoz, 2014), a detailed analysis of their perceptions is crucial to fully explore the richness of their experience. In the words of Bolívar and Domingo Segovia (2019): Narrative expresses the emotive dimension, complexity, relationships, and uniqueness of experience, in contrast to the limitations of breaking down actions into discrete variables in an atomistic and formalistic way. As a mode of knowledge, narrative captures the richness and detail of meanings in human affairs, such as motivations, feelings, desires, and purposes, which cannot be conveyed through definitions, factual statements, or abstract propositions, as formal-logical reasoning tends to do (p. 16). In this way, narrative could be defined as the product of the experience developed during fieldwork, once it has been reconstructed, structured, and interpreted through the reflexivity of the autoethnographer. It integrates all the elements that allow the author to be recognized as a subject, including feelings, actions, motivations, expectations, relationships, positionings, etc. The author occupies a determined and determining social space, affected by the scenarios of production, collection, and interpretation of information (Vera Lugo & Jaramillo Marín, 2007). This aspect demonstrates the close and enriching kinship that autoethnography shares with approaches such as biography (Olave, 2017), autobiography (Bolívar & Domingo Segovia, 2019), life histories (Bolívar, 2014; Moriña, 2016), historical prosopography, microhistories, or phenomenological studies. Thirdly, the uniqueness of autoethnographic narratives lies in their condition as a meeting point between the personal sphere and the socio-cultural sphere of the researcher. This quality makes it possible to access and deconstruct the network of meanings that are common to individuals who share a specific time and location within a specific chronotope. Therefore, autoethnography seeks to systematically describe and analyse personal experiences to understand cultural experiences (Ellis et al., 2015). According to Dubé, it is these aspirations that generate “a narrative of self that takes into account the relationship with others in cultural and social contexts” (2017, p. 7). Precisely because of this, in this type of report, “each part acquires its meaning as a function of the whole, and the report as a whole depends – in turn – on the meaning of each part” (Bolívar & Domingo Segovia, 2019, p. 10). The quotations below summarise the above ideas: Back and forth, autoethnographers gaze: first they look through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal 38 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 experience; then, they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations. As they zoom backward and forward, inward and outward, distinctions between the personal and cultural become blurred, sometimes beyond distinct recognition (Ellis, 2004, pp. 37–38). Autoethnography emphasises the analysis and interpretation of cultural aspects of the researcher’s behaviour, thoughts, and experiences of inquiry, typically derived from fieldwork, in relation to others and to the society being studied. This approach entails exploring the interaction between the personal self and the social, or between the introspective self and the cultural, by observing and describing in detail and depth the connection between personal and cultural dimensions (Guerrero Muñoz, 2014, p. 238). As these two excerpts illustrate, the autoethnographic method involves an inevitable and desirable fusion between subject and object, with the researcher’s experience always at the center of the exploration. This complex and ever-changing process involves actions and attitudes such as introspection, reflection, self-criticism, sensations, feelings, and professional development, and is subject to permanent interaction with other subjects or objects in the environment. Biographical-narrative research is characterized as dynamic, narrative, contextualized, constructivist, and interactionist by Bolívar and Domingo Segovia (2019). As Elías Hernández (2018) has emphasized, this interactionist quality is precisely what makes autoethnography a valuable method: “To observe without dialogue places us in front of the risk of constructing a partial, limited, and possibly erroneous vision; to dialogue without observing confines the analysis to the terrain of discourse; both techniques bring the researcher closer to an intersubjective reality that grants validity/ credibility/trust...” (p. 4). In short, autoethnography is characterized by a commitment to the vindication of lived experience, both personal and collective, as well as memory (Fernández-Droguett, 2007). It is even associated with an epistemological position that emphasizes the protagonism of self-discovery (Smith, 2005). Critiques of Autoethnography Despite the many advantages of autoethnography, the practice may still pose certain difficulties, as some reluctant authors have pointed out. Many of the criticisms leveled at autoethnography share the perception that including the researcher within the object under investigation would cause an ethical clash with dominant research trends. As a result, the subjectivist nature of autoethnography, which is inherent to the method, is often considered a weakness rather than a strength (Viñado & García Pastor, 2014). Many have questioned the viability of autoethnography and the soundness of its results. Arguments range from disqualifying the method as narcissistic to denouncing its 39 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 alleged lack of ethics, to accusing it of being too similar to novelistic writing. The most frequent counter-arguments include the following: • Some view autoethnographers as narcissistic and self-indulgent (Coffey, 1999). • Others claim that autoethnography is too introspective and individualistic, and thus departs from even qualitative research (Sparkes, 2000). • Some researchers have used autoethnography as a shield to avoid the rigidities of empiricism (Richardson, 2003). • Autoethnography can generate a certain voyeurism among readers (Wall, 2008). • Critics argue that autoethnography is neither objective, ethical, analytical, nor careful in collecting information, unlike ethnography (Delamont, 2009). • Some advocates of autoethnography as a scientific method have ended up disseminating schemes for writing novels (León-Paime, 2011). On a more reflective note, authors such as Gannon (2006) or Wamsted (2012) have meditated on the various obstacles that can arise when merging the tasks of writing and self-knowledge. Gannon drew on French post-structuralist thought, with figures such as Barthes, Derrida, Cixous and Foucault, to warn that writing about oneself can only be a tentative, discontinuous, fragmented exercise that destabilizes the self. An Autoethnographic Case Study This section will showcase a research experience where autoethnography played a central role. The following pages will present a brief overview of the project, including its justification and objectives. Subsequently, the theoretical framework and the methodological design that were employed will be discussed. Finally, the structure of the analysis that was carried out will be outlined. Why Research Teaching Practice Today? This research was motivated by the current socio-cultural phenomenon where educational innovation has become a widespread aspiration in educational communities, reversing its previous status as a counter-hegemonic voice. Educationalists, foundations, banking institutions, and educational influencers construct and disseminate pro-innovation discourses that manage to capture general interest. However, in schools, new proposals must improve established routines; otherwise, they fail to work. This is a particular concern for teachers, who are attributed the responsibility of renewing teaching and learning processes. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the impact of pro-innovation discourses on teaching practices from a teacher’s perspective. The main objective of this research was to explore the impact of innovative discourses on Geography and History classes taught by one of the authors in Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) within the Spanish educational system. The specific objectives 40 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 were: 1) to investigate the expectations of current innovative discourses; 2) to analyse the process of implementing innovative measures in the case study; and 3) to examine how this process is interpreted from the teacher-researcher’s professional identity perspective. Educational Innovation Between Discourses and Practices In order to understand the current state of scientific research related to the research topic and how similar problems and subjects have been approached, it was necessary to develop a complete and updated theoretical framework. Therefore, special attention was given to theoretical and methodological approaches to educational discourse, particularly to works that identify educational innovation not only as a practical phenomenon in school contexts, but also as a discourse or set of sub-discourses that have been constructed with certain intentions and interests based on the discursive field from which they originate. Based on this foundation, the following topics were covered: typology of educational innovation (definition, attributes, classification, educational reformism in Spain, etc.), symptoms of neoliberal education (the notion of quality, school efficiency, accountability, privatization, etc.), the nature of innovative proposals (teaching models, methods, techniques, resources, processes, keys to success, etc.), characteristics of innovative teachers (the desirable teacher today, the TPACK model, teacher discomfort, teacher research, etc.), and finally, innovation in the area of Social Sciences teaching (research perspectives, the role of ICT, specific factors of change, etc.). Teaching Practice as a Case Study Narratives about teaching aim to discuss past experiences and shed light on new and redefined proposals that can lead to successful teaching and learning outcomes. They also take into consideration the specificities of each action, curricular design, and institutional project, as well as the characteristics of educational institutions and teachers who are responsible for mediating in the classroom. (Diamant, 2016, p. 45) To conduct this project, a case study was chosen as the overall methodological design, which is ideal for deconstructing teaching processes and for “research that teachers do for themselves” (Mertler, 2017, p. 4). This approach enabled the analysis of educational innovation to focus on a specific object that is abstract yet connected to many other spheres of reality, such as the author’s own Geography and History classes in Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO). The choice of these classes as a case study was justified for several reasons: (1) they were located in a private school in the city of Seville with a specific school culture that required in-depth analysis; (2) they had undergone significant teaching transformations in recent years, causing a strong epistemological crisis; and (3) they constituted a professional environment full of difficulties and contradictions that needed to be understood before any proposal for improvement could be made. 41 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 During the fieldwork, which took place between 2017 and 2019, a corpus of twelve texts from four different discursive fields (legislative framework, school, Social Sciences Department, and classroom) was compiled. The participants in the research included the teacher-researcher and forty-four students from the four years of ESO, who were considered educational agents capable of interpreting and generating changes in the way teaching-learning processes are approached (Melero Aguilar, 2012). Autoethnography as a Methodological Foundation To develop this case study, autoethnography and critical discourse analysis were chosen as data collection and analysis methods. Both methodologies were applied in accordance with the parameters of Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 2002). The principles of the latter allowed for the identification of themes, patterns, and relationships in the narrative data. On the other hand, the application of the narrative approach facilitated the overall understanding of the research results. This was achieved through the identification of certain situations or personal feelings that served as perfect examples of how the phenomenon under study was experienced by the research subjects. Like the work of Gallardo Fernández et al. (2020), the chosen methods were based on the assumptions outlined in the theoretical framework, as well as prior research and teaching experiences. A combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques, along with deductive and inductive approaches, was employed while carefully considering the specific requirements of the object of study and its discursive-textual approach (see Table 1). Table 1 Research Methods, Techniques, and Instruments Methods Data acquisition techniques Analytical techniques Instruments Autoethnography Participant observation Teacher-researcher’s diary Structured interview Interview script Critical discourse analysis Pre-analysis Lexicometric analysis MAXQDA and Sketch Engine Content analysis Mixed category system Linguistic analysis In this case, autoethnography was conceived of as a procedure aimed at addressing some of the shortcomings identified during the literature review process. It was a research strategy that, in conjunction with ethnography – a particularly fertile method in educational research (Celigueta & Solé, 2014; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1994; Woods, 1987) was perfectly compatible with the structure of the case study and the method of 42 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 critical discourse analysis. Additionally, it was a teaching strategy that would allow us to become aware of a reality for which the autoethnographer himself was partly responsible. Moreover, autoethnography’s adaptability to the field would help us to understand how participants experience the phenomenon of educational innovation, as well as the interactions they establish with one another, by using data collection techniques such as participant observation and semi-structured interviews. A researcher’s diary was employed as the instrument for participant observation, serving as both a descriptive and reflective tool. It facilitated a continuous and systematic record of personal observations, perceptions, and analyses. This record followed autoethnographic principles and assumed a self-reporting character (Moriña, 2017, p. 54). The observations collected referred exclusively to facts, attitudes, and resources present or intervening in the Geography and History classes. For example, the diary collected comments on school productions (exams, blogs, notebooks, projects, etc.) and everyday tools such as teaching materials (digital books, interactive tools, presentations, videos, etc.), monthly activity circulars, social networks, homework diaries, timetables, etc. In any case, the observations of the experience itself were considered another source, to be analysed together with the rest of the texts that made up the corpus (five regulatory texts, three organizational texts of the school, three documents of the Social Sciences Department, and transcripts of the interviews with the students). Below (see Table 2) are some examples of the varied typology of observations recorded in the teacherresearcher’s diary: Table 2 Selected Excerpts From the Teacher-Researcher’s Diary Excerpt “Today, during one of those internal events at the School that forces us to stop all classes to go to the playground to celebrate something, with bouncy castles everywhere, one of the most veteran colleagues gave me one of those phrases I will never forget: ‘this is not a school; this is a theme park.” “The History Week is the biggest challenge I face along with my Social Sciences colleague. This is the third year I have had to organize it, and I wish I didn’t have to. I don’t know how many extra hours of work we have put in, but what I am sure of is that they are not paid for with anything. We haven’t even received feedback from any of the members of the School’s management team. 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O. (2012). Borges and bikes riders: Toward an understanding of autoethnography. Qualitative Research in Education, 1(2), 179–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/qre.2012.09 Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.) (2009). Methods for critical discourse analysis. SAGE. 51 Pedagogika / 2023, t. 151, Nr. 3 Woods, P. (1987). La escuela por dentro: La etnografía en la investigación educativa [Inside schools: Ethnography in educational research]. Centro de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia de España y Paidós. Savirefleksija mokyme: svarstymai apie autoetnografijos transformacinį potencialą Diego Luna1, José Antonio Pineda-Alfonso2, Francisco F. García-Pérez3, Conceição Leal da Costa4 1 Sevilijos universitetas, Edukologijos fakultetas, Pirotecnia g., ES-41013 Sevilija, Ispanija, [email protected] 2 Sevilijos universitetas, Edukologijos mokslų fakultetas, Pirotecnia g., ES-41013 Sevilija, Ispanija, [email protected] 3 Sevilijos universitetas, Edukologijos fakultetas, Pirotecnia g., ES-41013 Sevilija, Ispanija, [email protected] 4 Evoros universitetas, Edukologijos ir psichologijos tyrimų centras, Barba Rala g. 1, PRT-7005-345 Evora, Portugalija, [email protected] Santrauka Naratyvinė tyrimo metodologija plačiai pripažinta tyrimo metodika, aktuali tyrėjams ir tiriamiesiems. Tai vertinga strategija analizuojant švietimo reiškinius. Šiuo straipsniu siekiama ištirti autoetnografijos, kaip tyrimo ir mokymo modalumo, potencialą švietimo srityje. Norint pasiekti šį tikslą, tyrimas pradedamas teorinės sistemos, kuri apibūdina metodo kilmę, sąvokų apibrėžimus ir pagrindines ypatybes, kūrimu. Toliau pateikiamas atvejo tyrimas, siekiant parodyti autoetnografijos potencialą fiksuojant tam tikrus edukacinius reiškinius. Galiausiai aptariami prieš tarin giausi šio metodo aspektai, konkrečiai sprendžiamos trys tariamos problemos: subjektyvumo perteklius, stebėtojų šališkumas ir griežtumo stoka. Siekiant išspręsti šias problemas, teorinėje sistemoje pateikta kritika susiduria su teoriniais ir empiriniais argumentais. Aprašyta tyrimo patirtis leidžia manyti, kad autoetnografija gali veikti kaip ideologinio pasipriešinimo elementas ir išgyvenamos patirties, atminties ir savęs atradimo garantas. Atliktas tyrimas praturtina mokslinę literatūrą apie autoetnografiją, kaip vertingą ir perspektyvų švietimo srities tyrimų ir mokymo būdą. Esminiai žodžiai: autoetnografija, mokymo profesinis tapatumas, naratyvinė dokumentacija, mokymas vidurinėje mokykloje, atvejo analizė. Gauta 2023 04 12 / Received 12 04 2023 Priimta 2023 09 12 / Accepted 12 09 2023