This ethnographic work explores the concept of authenticity in the higher education
classroom – specifically in my own first, second and third/fourth year undergraduate
Change Makers classrooms. Presented as an evocative auto- and other ethnography, the research details a cross-sectional insight into my own and my
students’ experiences during a single academic year at a STEMM-focussed,
research-intensive university. As my role entails the design and delivery of the highly
interactive, student-centred Change Makers modules, this work specifically explores
the interplay between the design, teaching and research domains.
This exploratory work brings the highly reflexive (auto)ethnographic lens not only to
the experience under study, but to the conduct of such work, examining
philosophical, epistemological and ontological issues arising from the aims, method
and analysis within this research. Rather than accounting for, mitigating or otherwise
trying to control the messy and problematic nature of this type of highly subjective
and qualitative work, the research aims to surface and exploit these very issues to
generate deeper, more complex and polysemous insights into our classroom
experiences.
Privileging the integrity and wholeness of the ethnographic story-world and the
experiences within, the narrative attempts to situate all component parts of the
research within that story-world, both revealed and contained by the
autoethnographic authorial exposition.
Embracing all of the above, this thesis subverts the norms of academic writing to
capture existentialist sensibilities towards the notion, exploration and expression of
authenticity. Notably, the work attempts to centre the role, experiences and insights
of the reader in the conduct and communication of the analysis, whilst using varied
and creative methods to present student voices alongside those of the author within
the narrative.