1. Autoethnography, Narrative Analysis, and a Principal’s Reflection on Moral Purpose
Jim Lane, Ed.D.
University of Phoenix
International Conference of Qualitative Inquiry
University of Illinois
May 19, 2017

2. Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! The Story of Tom and Rita
Sexual Infidelity
Alcoholism
Addiction to Prescription Drugs
Campus-wide disruption
Emotional and Professional Collapse

3. My Background Free-lance Magazine Writer
High School English Teacher 11 years
Middle School Assistant Principal 7 years
Principal Orange Pines Middle School 7 years
Principal Meeks Middle School 3 years

4. Personal Motivations Childhood traumas Death of my mother
Father’s two disastrous marriages and professional failures
Middle class comfort and economic hardships.

5. Professional Motivations
Many school principals unreflective and unempathetic
Haunted by stories that I carried with me
Needed framework and methodology to understand my own decision making

6. Starratt’s Ethical Frameworks for Ethical Dilemmas
Ethic of Critique deals with questions of social justice and human dignity.
Ethic of Justice implies more specific responses to unethical practices identified through the lens of critique. It is often connected with legal or codified procedures.
Ethic of Care focuses on relationships from a personal rather than legalistic regard.

7. Data Collection Notes- the “James Comey” approach Memos Agendas Emails
Analytic memos
Reflective journals

8. Method Narrative Inquiry & Three-Dimensional Space Autoethnography
Clandinin & Connelly : To adequately understand an experience or event, one must “experience it simultaneously in three ways and to ask questions pointing each way”.
Autoethnography
I will inductively analyze and reflect primarily on self-authored texts tied to critical professional ethical dilemmas so as to discover emergent themes, patterns, insights, and epiphanies in the development of my persona as a morally directed school leader.

9. Three-Dimensional Space
Interaction
(personal and social; inward and outward)
Continuity
(past, present, and future; backward and forward)
Situation
(place)
I will re-create these critical events through descriptive vignettes in which I will capture personal and social implications of the experiences using Clandinin and Connelly’s model of three-dimensional narrative space.

10. Autoethnography & Vignettes
Auto-ethnographies show people in the process of figuring out what to do, how to live, and what their struggles mean.
Writing difficult stories is a gift to self, a reflexive attempt to construct meaning in our lives and heal or grow from our pain
Carolyn Ellis
Cole and Knowles note that thematic interpretations are finally represented “in the form of detailed and rich life history accounts” (2001, p. 13).

11. Ethical Frameworks
Ethic of Critique
Ethic of Justice
Ethic of Care

12. Implications for Further Study
Call for more autoethnographic studies, not only by principals, but by other school leaders
I see a particular need for studies that examine the ethics of justice and critique

13. Closure
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Stanza 46,ll