Tracing pedagogic frailty in arts and humanities education: An autoethnographic perspective

Abstract

This paper offers an approach to support the development of reflective teaching practice among university academics that can be used to promote dialogue about quality enhancement and the student experience. Pedagogic frailty has been proposed as a unifying concept that may help to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching within universities by helping to maintain a simultaneous focus on key areas that are thought to impede development of pedagogy. These areas and the links that have been proposed to connect them are interrogated here through the dialogic analysis of a framed autoethnographic narrative produced by a community ‘insider’ who has considerable experience of teaching within the arts and humanities. This person-centred methodology acknowledges the subjective nature of teaching and gives voice to important stories that otherwise might not be heard formally, and allows an academic to rehearse this voice individually before comparing it with others in the institution

Exploring the integration of teaching and research in the contemporary classroom: An autoethnographic inquiry into designing an undergraduate music module on Adele’s 25 album

“…A recurrent theme in autoethnographic research on the academic profession concerns the usefulness of the method for evaluating one's professional identity (Archer, 2008;Austin and Hickey, 2007;Kinchin and Wiley, 2018;Learmonth and Humphreys, 2011;Shreeve, 2009Shreeve, , 2011. Skelton (2012) isolates three distinct 'teacher identities' in higher education: the teaching specialist; the research-active academic who teaches as a secondary activity; and a middleground, the 'blended professional', whose research may be pedagogical rather than subject-specific in nature.…”

“…It has received extensive application within pedagogic studies, some explicitly positioned within a particular taught discipline (e.g. Kinchin and Wiley, 2018 on the humanities), others exploring more focused topics such as the experiences of industry practitioners navigating the transition into academia (e.g. Franklin, 2019;Shreeve, 2011).…”

University-led internships for innovative thinking: a theoretical framework

“…These can also be used as a means of professional development (Kinchin and Wiley 2018). Hence, by using the autoethnographic technique, authors were able to record, question, critique and refine the IFI program development process and these reflective insights can be useful for other educational practitioners.…”

“…The advantage of using autoethnography is that it allows researchers to understand, and question their own beliefs and critically explore teaching practices (Trahara, 2013). Reflective practices used in autoethnography provide inputs to promote dialogue on quality enhancement and student experience (Kinchin and Wiley, 2018). These can also be used as a means of professional development (Kinchin and Wiley, 2018).…”

“…Reflective practices used in autoethnography provide inputs to promote dialogue on quality enhancement and student experience (Kinchin and Wiley, 2018). These can also be used as a means of professional development (Kinchin and Wiley, 2018). Hence, by using the autoethnographic technique, authors were able to record, question, critique, and refine the IFI program development process and these reflective insights can be useful for other educational practitioners.…”