Autoethnography as Method

This methods book will guide the reader through the process of conducting and producing an autoethnographic study through the understanding of self, other, and culture. Readers will be encouraged to follow hands-on, though not prescriptive, steps in data collection, analysis, and interpretation with self-reflective prewriting exercises and self-narrative writing exercises to produce their own autoethnographic work. Chang offers a variety of techniques for gathering data on the self—from diaries to culture grams to interviews with others—and shows how to transform this information into a study that looks for the connection with others present in a diverse world. She shows how the autoethnographic process promotes self-reflection, understanding of multicultural others, qualitative inquiry, and narrative writing. Samples of published autoethnographies provide exemplars for the novice researcher to follow.

Author Biography

Heewon Chang is Associate Professor of Education at Eastern University. Trained as an educational anthropologist, she has conducted ethnographic studies of adolescents in the United States and Korea, one of which was published in Adolescent Life and Ethos: An Ethnography of a US High School. Her other research interests include autoethnography, multicultural education, cultural identity, and gender issues. She founded, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of, two open-access online journals—Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education and International Journal of Multicultural Education.