Collaborative Autoethnography for Teacher PD¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 1 study (1 qualitative), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 1 claim rests on one study

Description¶

Standard professional development often positions research or expert frameworks as the primary content teachers absorb. Collaborative autoethnography (CAE) inverts this: teachers write short individual reflections on their own practice in response to an open-ended prompt, then collectively and silently read and annotate the full set of reflections before discussing them as a group — letting themes emerge from teachers' own accumulated experience, with research readings woven in afterward to extend (not replace) what the group surfaces. Across sessions, the group itself crafts the next prompt based on unresolved questions from the current one, so the arc of the professional-learning sequence is participant-driven.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A cohort of teachers meeting repeatedly over an extended period (the source study used four ~3-hour sessions across a school year) — a single session does not allow themes to develop and "diffract" across repeated cycles
• Written reflections submitted before each session, so all participants have time to read and annotate everyone's response before group discussion
• A safe, informal structure (the source study used an initial meal/check-in) especially valuable when the cohort meets outside participants' home schools, reducing workplace-hierarchy pressure on vulnerability

Constraints¶

• Themes take multiple sessions to develop and "diffract" across the group — a single session is unlikely to produce the same depth of shared insight as a sustained series

Implementation Variability¶

• The specific prompts and research readings are topic-dependent (the source study focused on relationships in scientific argumentation); the reusable structure is the write-annotate-discuss-and-redesign cycle, not the specific content

Target Learners¶

• In-service teachers seeking sustained, practice-grounded professional learning on a topic not easily reduced to a checklist (e.g., relational/affective dimensions of teaching)

Target Learning Goals¶

• Relationship-focused PD shifts teacher conceptions of rigor and safety in argumentation instruction [+W]

Instructions¶

1. Introduce the collaborative-autoethnography approach and its ethnographic framing (attending to one's practice as situated in social/cultural context).
2. Before each session, have each teacher write a 1-2 page reflection responding to a prompt the group crafted at the end of the previous session.
3. At the start of each session, have participants silently read and annotate (underline, circle, mark) all submitted reflections, noting recurring themes.
4. Facilitate a whole-group discussion to surface and name the patterns participants noticed across the reflections.
5. Introduce relevant research articles (divided among participants, shared back to the group) to extend or complicate the themes that emerged from the reflections.
6. Collaboratively draft the next session's prompt based on what remains unresolved or newly surfaced.
7. After the final session, invite meta-reflection on the PD design itself (what worked, what should change) to refine the model for future use.

Related Strategies¶

• (none yet linked)
• Self-directed professional learning cycle in recurring two-week PD chunks with public goals and study groups

Examples¶

• Six secondary science teachers used this structure across four Saturday sessions (Oct 2017-May 2018) to explore the role of relationships in scientific argumentation, producing 25 total reflections and 11+ hours of recorded discussion.

Key Sources¶

• Chowning, J. T. (2023). "We All Sort of Jump to That Relationship Piece": Science Teachers' Collaborative Professional Learning about the Role of Relationships in Argumentation. Cognition and Instruction, 41(4), 436-471. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2023.2180006