Unfolding possibilities through a decolonizing project: Indigenous knowledges and rural Japanese women

Rural Japanese women have been overlooked or misrepresented in the academic and nationalist discourses on Japanese women. Using an anti‐colonial feminist framework, I advocate that centring discussions on Indigenous knowledges will help fill this gap based on the belief that Indigenous‐knowledge framework is a tool to show the agency of the ‘colonized’. In this paper, I attempt to answer the following question: What is the role of Indigenous knowledges in the context of rural Japanese women? I first discuss my epistemological approach by exploring the notion of Indigenous knowledges and my location within it. This process led me to employ autoethnography as the central methodology of this paper. Second, in order to better situate rural Japanese women, I look at Japanese history, especially the Meiji period (1868–1912) when Westernization began to exert a major influence on the Japanese nationalist movement via its control over knowledges carried by rural Japanese women. Third, in order for me to reclaim these subjugated Indigenous knowledges, I introduce my lived experience through autoethnography as a starting point to explore the possibilities that lie in the Indigenous‐knowledge framework. Fourth, I further discuss the interlocking nature of the issues surrounding nationalism, representation, knowledge production and identity emerging from the discussion on rural Japanese women and my reflexive text. This leads us to an assessment of how an Indigenous‐knowledge framework may shift discussions/perceptions of rural Japanese women in particular. Lastly, I conclude by noting the potential implications and applications of further research on this topic in other parts of the world.     

Expedition (auto)ethnography: an adventurer-researcher’s journey

Adventure expeditions are characterised by their unique temporal and spatial separateness from the quotidian and their exploratory and oft times risky nature. As such they offer a multitude of possibilities in research terms for the inquisitive investigator. Few studies however have considered the researcher’s experience of exploring such settings. Primarily methodological in focus, this paper examines the challenges and management of the adventure-researcher’s multiple roles during a sea kayaking expedition. An expedition observation framework is constructed as a tool to aid the conceptualisation of the field. In a candid and reflexive social commentary, the relative and fluid positioning of the researcher in insider-outsider terms is probed and despite their nuanced differences, the interplay of ethnography and autoethnography in achieving this. The concept of existential authenticity as a complementary theoretical framework is used to illustrate the marginality and liminal nature of the adventure scape and the researcher’s task within it.     

Blending Voices: Autoethnography as a Vehicle for Critical Reflection in Social Work

Critical reflection is important to vital process issues within social work practice; thus, it warrants attention in teaching and supervisory contexts. Autoethnography is a newer qualitative research methodology that uses the experiences of the author/researcher to extend social science understanding (Sparkes, 2000). In this article, the authors use autoethnography to frame critical reflection as a process of exploring social work knowledge and its potential implications, given that such knowledge is situated within fragmented and diverse selves and identities. Thus, good autoethnography is a unique way of accessing knowledge within intersubjective realities, which simultaneously generates a form of critical reflection (the comparison and assessment of emergent knowledge situated within selves and identities). Purposely incorporating an autoethnographic strategy, the authors draw from their experiences to show how personal narratives, the core of autoethnography, might be used to infuse critical reflection into social work education and practice.     

A Critical Co-Constructed Autoethnography of a Gendered Cross-Cultural Mentoring Between Two Early Career Latin@ Scholars Working in the Deep South

Multicultural mentoring has been suggested to support Latin@ faculty success in their careers, yet current literature on effective mentorships of Latin@ faculty is limited. This critical co-constructed autoethnography draws on critical race theory (CRT) and latin@ critical race theory (LatCrit) frameworks to highlight the lived experiences and key elements of an effective gendered cross-cultural mentoring relationship in a Latin@ pretenure faculty dyad working in a predominantly White institution of higher education located in the Deep South of the United States. Drawing upon a methodological rhythm of sorts, a Black scholar acts as a muse providing testimonios and interpretations of a relationship existing among Latin@ scholars in predominantly White intellectual spaces. Findings from this critical co-constructed autoethnography note that a safe colored space supports effective mentoring, familismo, personalismo, enabling effective cross-cultural mentorship.     

FUTURE HOMEMAKERS AND FEMINIST AWAKENINGS: AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS A METHOD IN THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

The author describes a project that illustrates the use of critical ethnography as a research methodology in religious education. The article focuses on a facet of critical ethnography known as autoethnography. Autoethnography refers to the researcher's use of portions of her own life story in an ethnographic project. It allows the researcher to interrogate her reasons for engaging in a specific field, in this case, female adolescent voice. In her research with adolescent females, the author weaves memories of her own adolescence, especially those memories of significant adult mentors who helped her come to voice. Through the use of such autobiographical narrative, the researcher acknowledges the situated nature of her observations and reveals the connections between herself and the topic under study. In keeping with significant work in the field of anthropology, the author argues that this turn toward autoethnography allows for research that engages scholarly passion, enabling the researcher to effect change.     

Tensions of Reimagining Our Roles as Teacher Educators in a Third Space: Revisiting a Co/autoethnography Through a Faculty Lens

This co/autoethnography uses our lens as university faculty to examine how engaging in a year-long self-study with mentors nurtured a complicated third space where we could together begin to reimagine our roles as teacher educators. Two secondary faculty members and a doctoral assistant used co/autoethnography to revisit a collaborative self-study with mentors to better identify both the individual and programmatic complexities that arise when a third space is opened and we are invited to reinvent our perspectives and responsibilities as co-teacher educators. We ask two questions: What happens when faculty facilitate a third-space teacher education program with mentor teachers? How does this third space influence the teacher education practices in an urban teacher residency program? We present a series of tensions about our work together as teacher educators in the third space. They include professional into authentic relationships, authority into collaboration, collaborative agency into individual agency, and apprenticing to master teacher into apprenticing within a collective. Following findings about each tension, we discuss how we as faculty navigated each tension. Finally, we consider the implications of our work for all field-based teacher education programs.     

The eye of the hurricane: autoethnography in the southern Brazilian school context

The article systematizes the results of an autoethnography that aimed at understanding the difficulties of the collective work of teachers, their culture and their experience in the context of a municipal public school in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The autoreflexive exercise showed that urban violence leaves profound marks on the culture of the local community, and generates effects on the subjectivity and organization of the work of teachers in this school community.     

反身代词和先行语的关系问题

“约束论”明确了反身代词必须有一个与它同标的,而且统制它的成分作为它的先行语。反身代词与其先行语之间必须在人称、性和数这些名词性特征上保持一致,缺少了这种一致性将产生出不合语法的句子。而一些实际运用中的句子,揭示了该理论在描述充分性以及解释充分性上的欠缺。语料库分析方法的运用,在一定程度上弥补了语言直觉的不足。基于此提出相关假设：反身代词和先行语在人称、性和数这些名词性特征上有时可以是不一致的,空语类大PRO可以解释为反身代词的先行语,先行语可以是隐含性的,等等,对于“约束论”而言是一些有益的补充。     

Leadership Development through Mentoring in Higher Education: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Leaders of Color

In this collaborative autoethnography, we explored how 14 academic and administrative leaders of color working in faith-based higher education have experienced personal and professional mentoring, and how mentoring experiences have influenced their leadership development. All participants identified a wide array of developmental relationships that had contributed to their leadership development, although not all of the relationships were labeled as mentoring. Whereas female participants (11 in total) relied on these relationships primarily for psychosocial support, three male participants had more actively sought out mentoring relationships to develop career skills and expand their professional network. Particularly, for the female participants, mentoring took place mostly outside their professional settings. We argue that personal and institutional factors contributed to the participants’ limited access to professional mentoring within their higher education contexts. This collaborative autoethnography process, which lasted at least six months for most participants, unexpectedly provided professional mentoring opportunities for these leaders of color.     

Learning from MOOCs: a qualitative case study from the learners’ perspectives

This study describes the massive open online course (MOOC) experiences of three educational technology scholars assuming the roles of learners. Adapting Carroll’s model of school learning as a theoretical framework, the study employed an autoethnography method to collect empirical data in three different MOOCs. Data analysis from regularly recorded journals revealed commonalities and differences in learner experiences. Based on the results, a refined version of Carroll’s model was produced to provide a foundation for future research and development into MOOCs.     

Let’s Meet in Nepantla: The Possibility of Thirdspace as a Place “Others” Call Home

This autoethnography posits that my presence as a working-class Chicana obtaining an education in the United States consequently created a Thirdspace environment I recognize as Nepantla. Thirdspace allowed me to navigate urban schooling and elite institutions of higher education. Two narratives demonstrate opposing forms of acquired dominant and nondominant forms of cultural capital to interrogate the value of Thirdspace when considering unique knowledge generated by an insider along the margins. This article articulates that strategic construction of bridges into Nepantla may assist Latino students to successfully navigate the schooling experience and offer the potential to reframe educational discourse.     

Counselor educators using self as instrument in antiracist teaching

In this autoethnography inquiry, seven counselor educators from diverse intersectionalities discuss how they leverage their selfhood to promote antiracist counselor education. Based on two cycles of pattern coding, the authors identified themes of perceiving, experiencing, creating, and facilitating. Implications for future research and practice are offered.     

Motivations for older adults’ participation in distance education: A study at the National Open University of Taiwan

The paper presents an enabling framework for experiential learning that connects with reflexive modernity. This framework places an emphasis on learning with others and on the role of theory, practice and reflection. A sociological argument is constructed for an alternative framework for experiential learning that derives from social theory. It is argued that reflection in learning connects with the concept of reflexivity in contemporary social theory. The arguments are developed through discussion of the following themes: (a) How does reflective learning in post compulsory education align with the needs of learners and reflexive modernity? (b) How can experiential learning provide a framework for more reflexive learning in education?     

Code-switching 101: Black women counselor educators’ personal and professional identity development

The perceptions of personal and professional identity development from four Black women counselor educators were examined through a collaborative autoethnography methodology. Themes identified include (a) intentionality of code-switching, (b) inextricable identities, (c) fight for and with authenticity, and (d) mutual development of personal and professional identities.     

The International Consortium for Educational Development in Higher Education

The affective dimensions of intimacy and emotional labour in academic development are explored utilising two methodological resources: autoethnography and narrative practice. An excerpt from the author’s reflective professional journal infused with affect and emotion is analysed utilising theories of intimacy in modernity, emotion work, and professional intimacy. The journal excerpt is ‘restoried’ to produce narrative lines that provide insight into the journal entry. The article concludes by proposing a ‘pedagogy of intimacy’ as an analytical space that values both skill and care.     

Meta-ethnography of autoethnographies: a worked example of the method using educational studies

ABSTRACT

Despite questions about autoethnography in the ethnography and education research family, autoethnography is published in selective peer-reviewed journals in education and in the social and health sciences. Even critics of autoethnographic studies note their ‘rising acceptance in the past 15 years’ [Delamont, S. 2009. “The Only Honest Thing: Autoethnography, Reflexivity and Small Crises in Fieldwork.” Ethnography and Education 4 (1): 51–63]. However, there has been less effort towards qualitative meta-synthesis to learn what other insights might be gained from collections of studies. With the advent of meta-autoethnography [Ellis, C. 2009. Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections of Life and Work. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press], each author can find a way to synthesise her/his own autoethnographic works, however, synthesising autoethnographies of different authors has received no attention. This article examines a critical, systematic approach to the meta-ethnography of autoethnographies and offers a worked example of the method using educational studies.     

关于四元数矩阵方程的最小二乘解

在四元数体Ω上引入了自反向量、自反矩阵和广义自反矩阵等概念，利用广义自反矩阵和广义反自反矩阵的性质讨论了线性方程组AX=6、矩阵方程AX=B及AXB=C的最小二乘解问题：当A为广义自反矩阵或广义反自反矩阵时，可将线性方程组AX=6的最小二乘解问题化为两个较小独立的子问题去讨论；当A、B都是广义自反矩阵或广义反自反矩阵时，可将矩阵方程AX=B的最小二乘解问题化为线性方程组的最小二乘解问题去讨论。     

Teaching and learning reflexive skills in inter- and transdisciplinary research: A framework and its application in environmental science education

A crucial skill for researchers in inter- and transdisciplinary environmental projects is the ability to be reflexive about knowledge and knowledge production. Few studies exist on the operationalization of reflexive skills and teaching and learning strategies that help students master these skills. This research aims to contribute in this direction. We distinguished two components of reflexive skills: (i) assessing the relative contributions of scientific disciplines and non-academic knowledge in addressing environmental issues; (ii) assessing the role of norms and values in research. We developed a framework for teaching and learning reflexive skills and evaluated this framework within a quasi-experimental educational setting involving 3 groups of 30 students. Students’ reflexive skills were assessed quantitatively using a pre- and post-test questionnaire. Moreover, students’ reflection papers were analysed to get a better understanding of their perspectives on the teaching and learning framework. We show that it is possible to train students in reflexive skills, but it requires a well-designed learning setting.     

Ethnography's troubles and the reproduction of academic habitus

In this article, we explore the methodological possibilities of dual observation and ‘inter‐reflexive’ interpretation as we have experienced this in a longitudinal ethnographic case study of music teaching and learning in an English Cathedral Choir School. Our intent here is to understand the ways in which our particular historical, social and cultural perspectives lead us to partial yet complementary sensings, seeings, hearings and feelings in this setting, and the ramifications of this for the interpretations we bring to observational data, and the subsequent development of interpretive narrative accounts. Through an analysis of our respective narrative accounts of our first observational encounter in the research setting, and subsequent ‘inter‐reflexive’ interpretation, we seek to interrogate the ways in which a plausible, credible and believable narrative can be developed through the separate and joint analyses of storied reflexive observation.