Abstract:

This paper critically explores the use of personal reflective dairies as the primary research tool for an auto ethnographic study into the moral dimensions of teaching. Auto ethnography, according to Ellis (2004) ‘overlaps art and science…it is part of self (auto) and culture (ethnography)’ (pg31). It is a methodology that seeks to understand the experience of the researcher as the primary participant in the research and it tells stories from lived experience to show the emotional, cognitive and cultural aspects of that concrete experience. The use of the personal diary was adopted firstly for its potential to be authentic, trustworthy and systematic due the very nature of the researcher as participant (Ellis 2004, 2009; Piper & Simons 2011) and secondly as a genuine method to interpret the extent of everyday actions as moral ones. Diaries, according to Aleskewski 2006, Holly & Altrichter 2011, Bold 2012, Bartlett & Milligan 2015, are able to gain a deeper insights into teacher behaviours, actions and decision making that may not be visible without such a contemporaneous record.

The results of the pilot study trialling the diary (Duffy, 2013) cast doubts over its ability to be and to maintain authenticity and trustworthiness and it raised questions about the meaning of these concepts for the researcher (Corusetta & Cranton 2004, Bailystock (2013), both for and within auto-ethnographic research. The aim to be systematic in the data collection also proved a hindrance more than a help and challenged the researcher to reconsider wider ethical issues in the process of analysing the diary.

This paper will present the researcher’s journey after the pilot study and towards the settling of some of these issues in order to rebuild her trust in the diary as a collection method. It will trace the emotional and epistemological experience of this journey where a cultural and behavioural shift was made from what was arguably a traditional understanding of what is systematic and trustworthy in diary keeping to a more contemporary and ultimately more authentic approach.

Keywords:

Auto-ethnography, authenticity, dairies.