Dr Mike Hayler (University of Brighton)

While autoethnography is increasingly the term of choice for a whole toolbox of research methods within the qualitative research workshop, debates continue about where the toolbox sits. In this seminar I would like to share and discuss some of the methods of inquiry used in my study of the professional identity of university-based teacher educators in England. The study became my doctoral thesis, then a book and is soon to be a ground-breaking film starring . . . (OK I made up the bit about the film). My approach was to use a number of approaches that come from this particular toolbox through a process in which my own auto-biographical writing was shared and responded to by other participants as a method of exploring the ways in which professional lives develop. This in turn raised issues about the way people story and use memory, the role of others in the construction of identity through narrative, and the nature of professionalism.

Mike Hayler is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Brighton working mainly with students who are preparing to be teachers. He is an associate member of the international Self-Study in Teacher Education special interest group and a member of the Altogether for Autoethnography group at Brighton. His book Autoethnography, Self-Narrative and Teacher Education was published by SensePublishers in November 2011.