This section gives a general overview of what autoethnography is and how it has been used in social sciences, particularly in the UCLA Teacher Education Program (TEP) to offer teacher candidates a meaningful and reflective method to critically examine their personal experiences within the broader context of schooling, identity, and social justice.
In Guiding voices: Supporting first-year teachers in writing critical autoethnography, UCLA TEP faculty members write about ways in which first-year teachers (Residents) are encouraged to connect theory with lived experience, making sense of the challenges and growth they encounter through storytelling. This form of writing supports candidates in articulating their evolving teacher identities, understanding the impact of systemic inequities, and recognizing their own positionality in the classroom.
- Park, J., Lopez, E., Kersey, S., Hipolito, E., & Nava, I. (2025, September 1). Guiding voices: Supporting first-year teachers in writing critical autoethnography. UCLA Center X. https://centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/xchange/autoethnography/briefing-room/
- Lopez, E. (2020). Critical teacher autoethnography. The CCTE Fall 2020 Research Monograph, 75, 75–84.
- Bochner, A. P., & Ellis, C. (2022). Why autoethnography?. Social Work and Social Sciences Review, 23(2), 8-18.
TEP Critical Teacher Autoethnography Presentation Video
Guiding Voices: Supporting First-Year Teachers in Writing Critical Autoethnography
AUTHORS
Jaime Park, Eduardo Lopez, Sara Kersey, Emma Hipolito, & Imelda Nava
ABSTRACT
Guiding Voices: Supporting First-Year Teachers in Writing Critical Autoethnography explores how UCLA Teacher Education Program Residents (students in the 2nd half of the program) can engage in reflective, justice-oriented inquiry through the process of writing critical autoethnography. Drawing on a framework rooted in critical pedagogy, autoethnographic methodology, and phases of first-year teaching, this paper documents the collaborative supports provided to new teachers as they navigate the tensions of classroom practice and identity development. Through structured peer dialogue, theory-grounded writing supports, and faculty mentorship, Residents examine how their personal histories, sociocultural contexts, and teaching experiences intersect to shape their evolving philosophies of education. By centering teacher voice, this work advocates for writing as a transformative tool for professional growth, self-empowerment, and equity-centered practice.
POSTER
Click on the image for a larger version of the poster.
Critical Teacher Autoethnography
AUTHOR
Eduardo Lopez
ABSTRACT
Candidates in the Teacher Education Program (TEP) at the University of California, Los Angeles enroll in a two-year program and prepares aspiring teachers to become social justice educators in urban schools. Candidates obtain a preliminary credential in the first year. In the second year, candidates work as full-time teachers and complete an M. Ed. by engaging in an inquiry-based research project. The project is designed to help candidates examine and reflect on their social justice identities and practices.
In this article I reflect on and discuss how my understandings of the inquiry project have shifted and informed how I guide candidates through the research and writing process. Over the last fifteen years, the project has transitioned into three theoretically and methodologically interrelated frameworks:(1) Action Research,(2) Critical Teacher Research, and (3) Critical Teacher Autoethnography. Each of the frameworks emerged and was mediated by the challenges I encountered in trying to understand how to develop a research and writing process that would help candidates successfully navigate the complexities and challenges of their first-year teaching as social justice educators.
Lopez, E. (2020). Critical Teacher Autoethnography. The CCTE Fall 2020 Research Monograph, 75.
Why autoethnography?
AUTHORS
Arthur Bochner and Carolyn Ellis
ABSTRACT
Autoethnography addresses the need and desire to make the human sciences more human by writing in ways that are more poignant, touching, vulnerable, and heartfelt. Since social work is a field not only of facts but also of meanings and values, researchers should not be obliged to cling to a narrow range of methodologies and writing genres that may be scientifically acceptable but poorly suited to the broad objectives of the field. Concerned more with evocation than information, autoethnography enables researchers and practitioners to address what it feels like, and what it can mean, to be alive and living in a chaotic and uncertain world, and to show others how they might endure it and move forward. As we developed evocative autoethnography, we not only questioned the boundaries between social sciences and humanities, we tried to stretch and cross them in ways that would create new practitioners and new genres for representing lived experience appealing to the hearts and senses of readers as well as their intellects.
Bochner, A. P., & Ellis, C. (2022). Why autoethnography?. Social Work and Social Sciences Review, 23(2), 8-18.
