8.2 Exploring Future Autoethnography

When I include personal stories in this book, I am engaging in a kind of autoethnography. This is the “auto” (self) part of autoethnography. When I, as an author, invite the reader to explore learning activities and pose reflection questions for them to consider based on the autoethnography, I am emphasizing the “ethnic” (others) part of autoethnography. As I write the stories, activities, and questions, I engage in the “graphy” (writing) part of autoethnography. Together, the autoethnographic stories about listening to the SONG of life integrate pieces of my life into a holistic picture that brings me joy and pleasure in recalling and writing the stories.

When I share my story of listening to the SONG of life with others (students, colleagues, and friends), I highlight autoethnography’s consciousness-raising purpose. For example, anecdotal feedback from a professional convention indicates that several academics are interested in incorporating ideas from listening to the SONG of life into their listening courses. To extend the potential impact of listening to the SONG of life beyond the scope of the conference, I consider autoethnographic validity and assessment issues in the next section.

There are several options for validating the veracity of autoethnographic stories that emphasize the teaching and learning of listening to the SONG of life in the classroom. One option involves students (instead of the teacher as author or reviewers as critics) judging the accuracy of the autoethnographic stories. For example, in Chapter Two of this book, I surveyed former students’ opinions of reconstructed student excerpts to obtain a partial validation of the story. Additional ideas for future research to bolster the validity of autoethnographic stories include exit interviews, focus groups, and surveys of students after grades for the class are posted. By way of illustration, questions for an interview or survey could include, How well does (or doesn’t) the instructor’s descriptive story resonate with your perceptions as a student in the course? How accurate are the instructor’s paraphrases of student voices? What significant learnings from class are not represented in the stories?

Another option for enhancing the veracity of autoethnographic stories is to employ the narrative paradigm^[1] as an evaluative lens. Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm provides two criteria for evaluating the rhetorical persuasiveness of a story. The criteria are narrative coherence (does the story hang together?) and narrative fidelity (does the story ring true with everyday life?). To test the rhetorical efficacy of an autoethnography, students, upon completing the course, could read an autoethnography and complete survey items to measure the coherence and fidelity of the story.^[2]

Finally, instructor and students can co-author an autoethnography of their learning experiences throughout the term. Co-authoring increases the validity of the story through the dialogue of multiple voices.^[3] Ideally, integrating instructor and student perspectives allows for a living document to emerge over time through, for example, an online anonymous and ungraded Wiki. The Wiki could include student and instructor weekly learning summaries, reactions to experiential activities, questions for reflection, and a mid and end-of-term assessment of the course.