Sarah Wall

An Autoethnography on Learning About Autoethnography

Autoethnography is an emerging qualitative research method that allows the author to write in a highly personalized style, drawing on his or her experience to extend understanding about a societal phenomenon. Autoethnography is grounded in postmodern philosophy and is linked to growing debate about reflexivity and voice in social research. The intent of autoethnography is to acknowledge the inextricable link between the personal and the cultural and to make room for nontraditional forms of inquiry and expression. In this autoethnography, the author explores the state of understanding regarding autoethnography as a research method and describes the experience of an emerging qualitative researcher in learning about this new and ideologically challenging genre of inquiry.

Easier Said than Done: Writing an Autoethnography

Autoethnography is an intriguing and promising qualitative method that offers a way of giving voice to personal experience for the purpose of extending sociological understanding. The authors experience of writing an autoethnography about international adoption has shown her, however, that autoethnography can be a very difficult undertaking. In writing her autoethnography, she confronted anxiety-producing questions pertaining to representation, balance, and ethics. As well, she dealt with the acceptability of her autoethnography by informal and formal reviewers. In this article she discusses the challenges she faced in her autoethnographic project to inform future autoethnographers and to inspire them to share their experiences and reflections. For the author questions linger, but she hopes that sharing issues that arise in autoethnographic work will strengthen our understandings of this challenging yet highly promising form of inquiry.

Adventures in transdisciplinary learning

Cross‐disciplinary collaboration is being promoted in academic and professional circles as an important strategy for developing new avenues of scholarly inquiry and for generating knowledge that is immediately applicable to the resolution of real‐world problems. This move toward cross‐disciplinary work has translated into calls for enhanced interdisciplinarity in doctoral education, although there are several barriers to the successful implementation of cross‐disciplinary work, especially during PhD studies. This article presents a personal narrative analysis of the authors’ experiences in a doctoral‐level transdisciplinary learning environment to illustrate the antecedents of successful cross‐disciplinary engagement and the supports required to sustain this type of work.

The Evocative Power of Projective Techniques for the Elicitation of Meaning

A unique project was undertaken by doctoral and postdoctoral students, and their mentor, from diverse backgrounds in health and social sciences to explore their past experiences as participants in a qualitative research training initiative called EQUIPP (Enhancing Qualitative Understanding of Illness Processes and Prevention). The purpose of the project was to create a symbolic representation of the EQUIPP program through the use of projective techniques. The authors examined the meaning of engaging in qualitative research training through images and conceptual metaphors that were subsequently consolidated thematically and then portrayed in the form of a newly constructed logo that was developed with the assistance of a professional graphic designer. Projective techniques proved to be a powerful, evocative tool for eliciting meaning and translating concrete experiences into visual discourse. In this paper, the authors discuss how projective techniques were operationalized and consider their broad implications for qualitative research.

Toward a Moderate Autoethnography

Autoethnography is an avant-garde method of qualitative inquiry that has captured the attention of an ever-increasing number of scholars from a variety of disciplines. Personal experience methods c...Autoethnography is an avant-garde method of qualitative inquiry that has captured the attention of an ever-increasing number of scholars from a variety of disciplines. Personal experience methods can offer a new and unique vantage point from which to make a contribution to social science yet, autoethnography has been criticized for being self-indulgent, narcissistic, introspective, and individualized. Methodological discussions about this method are polarized. As an autoethnographer and qualitative methodologist with an interest in personal experience methods, I have had the opportunity to review several autoethnographic manuscripts over the years. As my reviews accumulated, I began to see themes in my responses and it became apparent that I was advocating for an approach to autoethnography that lies in contrast to the frequently offered methodological polemics from philosophically divergent scholars. In this article, I draw from the reviews I have done to address topics such as applications and purposes for autoethnography, the degree of theory and analysis used within the method, data sources and dissemination of findings, and ethical issues. I then connect the concerns I see in the reviewed manuscripts to examples in the autoethnographic literature. Ultimately, I propose a moderate and balanced treatment of autoethnography that allows for innovation, imagination, and the representation of a range of voices in qualitative inquiry while also sustaining confidence in the quality, rigor, and usefulness of academic research.

“We Inform the Experience of Health” Perspectives on Professionalism in Nursing Self-Employment

Nursing work has evolved tremendously over the last century, raising ongoing questions about nursing’s professional status. Through various strategies, professionalization in nursing has to some extent been accomplished, although autonomy over nursing practice has been elusive. This is especially so in the contemporary health care system, in which managerial control is emphasized and physician dominance continues. In response to professional constraints in traditional work settings, nursing self-employment is growing. In this study I used focused ethnography to explore the professional experiences of Canadian self-employed nurses and to reconsider nursing knowledge, ethics, and professionalism in this unique context. Despite the barriers they faced, these nurses offered a perspective on nursing professionalism that transcends classic professional traits, showing how the concept of professionalism can be invoked not as a way to “prove” status but as a way to describe a sense of commitment and the contribution to societal well-being.

The impact of regulatory perspectives and practices on professional innovation in nursing

Since at least the 1970s in Canada, there have been calls for health system reforms based on innovative roles and expanded scopes of practice for nurses. Professional regulatory organizations, through legislation, define the standards and parameters of professional nursing practice. Nursing regulators emphasize public protection over the advancement of nursing; regulatory processes and decisions tend to be conservative and risk-averse. This study explored the impact that regulatory processes have on innovation in nursing roles. Nurses in a range of unique practice situations were interviewed, including nurses in non-traditional roles and/or settings, those with cross-jurisdictional career histories, and those working in interdisciplinary practices and educational settings. For these nurses, nursing practice was viewed through a traditional clinical lens, which did not fit for them. They experienced hassle, delay, and inconsistencies in regulatory practices. They felt mistreated and fearful of the regulator and lamented the ways in which ambitious, creative, capable nurses were stymied in attempting new applications for nursing knowledge. Nursing is constraining its own mandate to contribute to health care through stringent licensing processes. Healthcare reform provides an opportunity for nursing regulators to rethink their processes and provide the latitude for nurse-driven change.

Reflection/Commentary on a Past Article: “Easier Said Than Done: Writing an Autoethnography”: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/160940690800700103

It is a surprise to me that I have become known as an autoethnographer and that my article, “Easier Said Than Done,” included in this special issue, has generated the interest that it has. I did not set out on this path, although I am pleased to have become part of the development of a fascinating, dynamic, and important methodological movement. My initial motivation to explore autoethnography arose out of a growing awareness that my experience as an adoptive mother did not fit with discourses circulating in the literature, fueling my increasing desire to speak into that literature from a place of experience. What I wanted to do was simply address gaps in the adoption literature from my unique perspective; what happened along the way was that I became (happily) drawn into the rising swell of the autoethnographic method. Although my place as an autoethnographer was unexpected, my involvement in the growth of the method has fit into my career and impacted my work in powerful ways. I discovered autoethnography when I was a doctoral student. Between my master’s and PhD, I became an adoptive mother. A mentor told me at that time that I should be careful about spending too much time on “the adoption thing” since I would not be able to put parenting on my CV. His comments reflected the traditional worldview of the context from which I came; learning about autoethnography disrupted that perspective to the core as I came to see the power of being guided in my research by my own experience and trusting in both what I had to say and in my right to say it. In 2006, I wrote an article in which I explored autoethnography in a naive, basic, and wide-eyed way (Wall, 2006). Through that exploration, I learned that our personal lives and work lives are not bifurcated and became convinced of the value of starting with personal experience in sociological inquiry. Being drawn to ethnographic methods and believing in the importance of theory as a way of connecting that which is immediately known with what our imaginations are reaching toward (Gordon, 2004), I knew I could start my own autoethnographic project with the methodological tools of ethnography, coupled with the foundation of theory. Yet, as I pursued my autoethnographic work on international adoption, I discovered just how many challenges accompanied such a project. These challenges had not yet been discussed in the literature, leaving me to learn the hard way. Once I finished my project, I took stock of those challenges and decided to write them down for the benefit of future autoethnographers. Those insights formed the content of the article, “Easier Said Than Done.” My personal discovery of autoethnography and my learnings from the process of using the method coincided in the most symbiotic ways with the overall development of the method. It seemed that I was discovering and learning how to use the method in perfect step with others interested in personal experience research. At the time that I wrote my own autoethnography (published in two parts in Wall, 2012a, 2012b) and the methods articles (Wall, 2006, 2008), the method was an exciting, emancipatory idea without a lot of practical guidance. The state of the field created the perfect conditions for the sharing of and subsequent receptivity to my explorations and to the practical methodological experience I shared in “Easier Said Than Done.” I am genuinely amazed at the impact that this article has had (as well as my 2006 article). In the decade since this article was first published, hundreds of people have cited it and the download rates, even now, remain high. From time to time, whenever I need a little self-esteem boost, I check the citation

Transdisciplinarity and Nursing Education: Expanding Nursing’s Professional Identity and Potential

Nursing, as both a discipline and profession, has a history of struggling to define its unique identity and body of knowledge. As well, nurses work in a healthcare system that, despite ongoing change, continues to privilege biomedical technology and physician-driven services. However, global health crises, issues in addressing the social determinants of health, advances in medical science and technology, and healthcare reform compel a renewed conceptualization of nursing’s professional identity and purpose. If nursing were to embrace an expanded range of transdisciplinary knowledge, nurses could contribute to society’s health, in the broadest sense of the term, in new and unique ways. Developing transdisciplinarity in nursing work and education has been difficult and, for some nurses, threatening, even though the idea of expanded and transcendent knowledge is a potentially fruitful one for nursing.This chapter reviews the history of nursing’s conceptualizations of its knowledge and identity, considers the contemporary forces that necessitate a re-imagining of nursing’s current collective professional identity, and explores the ways in which transdisciplinarity in nursing professional education might allow nursing to respond effectively and creatively to contemporary health issues and to re-imagine its own identity and purpose into the future.