Collaborative Autoethnography and Academic Identity

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Contributions to Qualitative Methodologies: Autonomy, Collective Power, and Autoethnography (Table 1)

Abstract

As higher education scholars, we are professionally and personally implicated in our academic work. How do we make sense of the tensions between our identities and professional work? How do we share that dissonance in our scholarship? The purpose of this paper is to introduce “ethical mindfulness” (Guillemin & Gillam, 2015)) as reflective practice and framework to tour experiences and the development of academic identities. This paper documents two researchers coming together to examine their experiences with methodological and empirical rigor by employing collaborative autoethnography, discussing the experiences and ethical paradoxes that coexist within academic identities. The collaborative autoethnographic narratives challenge the idea that ethics and social justice are interchangeable concepts.

Authors

• Jarrett Gupton, University of South Florida

• Cecile H. Sam, Rowan University