Last week, you worked to develop your own resource for this assignment in this list of qualities of autoethnographic essays and possible topics. The final defining quality of autoethnographic essays that we will introduce today is the use of qualitative data. According to Jackson and Grutsch McKinney, “the author uses an inductive, qualitative approach for project design, data collection, and analysis” (11). Qualitative data is narrative–data in the form of words, phrases, and sentences–and authors we’ve read have used qualitative data in their autoethnographies. (Think of Inayatulla’s use of her own journals, diaries, and course notes.) For our purposes, you will use your peers’ writing in class as data for your autoethnographic essay.

We will practice collecting and analyzing narrative data in-class today, specifically using a method called grounded theory coding. According to researcher Kathy Charmaz, “coding is the pivotal link between collecting data and developing an emergent theory to explain this data. Through coding, you define what is happening in the data and begin to grapple with what it means” (113). Your goal in coding your peers’ writing is to formulate some connection between your experience and that of others. I will distribute a handout that uses Beatriz‘s and Ellen‘s posts for Blog 5 and we will practice coding together.

HOMEWORK

Using this blank coding table, select three blog posts among your peers’ writing. This means you’ll need to take time to read your colleagues’ work and decide while posts speak to you. If you really identify with the practice coding we did together, you can only choose ONE of the posts we did together today. The goal for this assignment is to get you mining our community’s data for evidence that helps you ask and answer questions about your own experiences. This is also intended to move you forward in your autoethnography. You should post your complete coding table--with excerpts of three blog posts written by your peers and your corresponding codes–by Tuesday, December 3. This assignment will be worth 25 points.

Works Cited

Charmaz, Kathy. Constructing Grounded Theory. 2nd ed., Sage, 2014.

Jackson, Rebecca L, and Jackie Grutsch McKinney. Writing+Self+Culture: Autoethnography for/as Writing Studies. Utah State UP, 2021.