The Future of Education

Autoethnography is a qualitative research method in which the author draws from one’s own experiences to question and explore how personal and professional beliefs, assumptions, values, actions and practices are influenced by the surrounding social, cultural, historical and political contexts, structures, traditions and norms. As an ethnographic and narrative-based research method, autoethnography involves personal storytelling as a form of biographical self-inquiry and a way of becoming self-aware and conscious of influences upon the self (Ellis & Bochner, 2000)). At the core of autoethnography is the process of reflexivity or critical reflexivity which is recognized as a conscious process of self-examination of how one’s beliefs, values, assumptions and knowledge are formed through experiences situated within contexts. Reflexivity, while involving aspects of reflection, extends the self to ‘bend back’ to more clearly recognize one’s own position in the world so that one can understand the limitations of one’s knowleding and appreciate the social realities of others (Ng et al., 2019).

Besides its value and use as a research method, autoethnography is increasingly recognized and applied as a pedagogical approach in various fields, such as social work, medicine and health professions, and management education, to foster self-reflexivity in enhancing personnel professionalism through the questioning of personal and epistemic knowledge bases and assumptions underppiing normative practices. However, within teacher education for the fields of special needs and inclusive education, there is a limited body of literature that demonstrates the application of autoethnography as a pedagogy for fostering reflexivity and inclusivity among teachers and other school personnel. The purpose of our presentation is to describe our use and report available evidence of autoethnography as a pedagogy for engaging educators within the higher education space in Singapore to be reflexive of their own biographical histories and attitudes towards persons with special needs/disabilities and to become more inclusive of people with disabiltiies.