Learning from our Multi-Stage Collaborative Autoethnography

Abstract

This article is a reflection on eight, then seven, now five women’s collaborative efforts to explore the development of our own leader identities. While each of us conducts research on women and leadership, we are a diverse group of women: we were born in three different countries (United States, Paraguay, and New Zealand) and currently live in three different countries (United States, Canada, and New Zealand). We are of diverse races, sexual orientations, and generations; we have leadership experiences in a variety of disciplines and industries; and we vary in the priority we place on this study. In this paper, we review our experiences conducting research during the first three plus years of our collaborative autoethnographic study and share what we learned from those experiences. We address previously published considerations for developing collaborative autoethnographies including: the number of participants involved; the extent of involvement of the participants and the level of collaboration during the study; the collaborative approaches used in the study; and the approaches to writing. We add a reflection on our leadership practices throughout the study and on the confidentiality challenges that emerged. We also discuss how our division of the study into multiple life stages and multiple projects within the life stages has influenced our experiences and how the challenges resulting from the long duration of our study have influenced our productivity and are expected to influence our future plans. Our lessons learned should prove useful as other autoethnographic research groups begin their own research processes.

Defining ourselves: Exploring our leader and activist identities as Asian American women doctoral students.

“…This approach relies on expanding critical self-reflection of one’s experiences from a “solo performance” to a collaboration among several researchers at once examining themselves and interrogating each other’s experiences through the meaning-making process (Chang et al, 2013, p. 24). Marginalized groups in academia have used CAE to highlight oppressive structures within, for example, women faculty leadership development (Devnew, Austin, Le Ber, LaValley, & Elbert, 2017), immigrant women faculty of color and leadership (Ngunjiri & Hernandez, 2017), burgeoning student of color researcher identity (Murakami-Ramalho, Piert, & Militello, 2008), and women of color student leadership in psychology (Hargons, Lantz, Reid Marks, & Voelkel, 2017). Along with intersectionality, CAE provides a process to represent and define ourselves, and in doing so, construct spaces of resistance and new ways of knowing (Cho et al, 2013; Collins, 1986).…”

A trio of teacher education voices: developing professional relationships through co-caring and belonging during the pandemic

“…Author One, though hierarchically senior reciprocated this trust. CAE enabled them to follow an organic process (Devnew et al , 2017) without excessive focus on ground rules establishment. Their interactions led to meaningful and reflective three-way conversations allowing exploration of various aspects of their academic life, shared concerns and experiences prior to and within the temporality of a pandemic which has further destabilised a system and educational discourse already in a state of flux.…”

Isolation in Globalizing Academic Fields: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Early Career Researchers

“…CAE provides a response to this critique, as it encompasses multivocality and intersubjectivity, owing to the multiple perspectives and experiences furnished by multiple autoethnographers (Hernandez, Chang, & Ngunjiri, 2017). CAE has been used to study various aspects of scholarly careers including career changes (Barrett & Brown, 2014;Humphreys, 2005); academic identity (Devnew, Austin, Le Ber, LaValley, & Elbert, 2017;Learmonth & Humphreys, 2012); immigrant scholars' navigation of the US Academy (Hernandez, Ngunjiri, & Chang, 2015;Ngunjiri et al, 2010); and mentoring experiences and leadership development in academia (Chang et al, 2014). More broadly, AE and CAE are well suited to situations in which the research requires access to intimate knowledge of sensitive issues (Ngunjiri et al, 2010), and in contexts in which individuals experience marginalization (Hinsdale, 2015) and "trauma or turning points that may led them to be marginalized or to feel powerless" (Lapadat, 2017: 598-599).…”