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The purpose of this paper is to present a collaborative (auto)ethnography that has emerged from the meeting of four academic researchers working with and from the heart in various Latin American contexts.

Our “I’s” have mingled with our very varied participations in different themes, latitudes, and disciplines – health, education and psychosocial approaches. We have worked, variously, in both English and Spanish. At the core of this piece are our own biographies, motivations, senses, academic dreams, international contexts, and the injustices and suffering felt in our bodies.

We seek to reflect from our experience of traveling as young researchers and as women with Latin souls. Through our stories, we show how crossing cultures as part of our research and work gives us both a privileged position but also the constant stress and questioning that goes beyond the intellectual and appears in our embodied experiences of interculturality.

The limitation of this piece of research is that it is based on personal experiences, that although there may be people who feel identified with these experiences, these are not generalizable or transferable.

Performative autoethnography is an instance to understand the world like a crisol with different faces; self, social, cultural and methodology, which allows us to understand the world from a holistic perspective.

With this paper, we hope to contribute for other women in academia to see themselves reflected in the experience of moving through a globalized world.

Through both living in and reflecting on this process, we show how our experiences provide us with new, intercultural “worlds under construction.”

This article aims to represent three ethnographers researching an organizational event within academia: the Second International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. It explores the divergent viewpoints of their ethnographic experiences as well as reflecting upon their relationships with each other as they attempted to understand each others’ viewpoints.

This ethnographic project involved participant observation, full participation, and narrative interviews. However, as the project continued, it evolved to reflexively examining the authors’ own viewpoints and relationships challenges.

This paper contributes to understanding ethnographic research of organizational events in several ways. First, it is an exemplar of how three ethnographers examining the same organizational event view it through differing lenses. Secondly, it shows how the authors worked together through the research, struggling to understand each others’ varied political and personal lenses through dialogue.

The research examined only one organizational event, therefore the findings are specific to this site and the same results may not necessarily be found in other organizations.

This paper is unique in that three ethnographers from different generations and different political worldviews can come together for the purposes of research, examine an organizational event and learn to cooperate with and appreciate each others’ viewpoints.

A need for increased attention to the ethical issues of organizational development has been voiced, and unless greater attention is given to ethical issues and problems, the continued potency of organizational development is in danger. While many disciplines train organizational development agents (e.g., psychology, sociology, communication, marketing, business, education), a need for an interdisciplinary code of ethics exists. In addition to proposing an interdisciplinary code of ethics for organizational development agents, the present paper discusses the ethical conduct of data collection, results publication, and change recommendations in the context of organizational development.

Aspects of intellectual competence would not be sufficient for quality teaching that requires a mix of intellectual and personal qualities. The purpose of this paper was to elicit personal attributes of teachers’ college applicants.

This qualitative case study consisted of 99 participants aged 20-24 years of average socio-economic and achievement backgrounds. The authors constructed five qualitative tools, in addition to the two existing standardized exams. Using techniques of the grounded theory, the authors sorted and synthesized the data through three-phase coding.

The authors elicited a general concept map of attributes, from which a personal attribute profile for each participant emerged. This model makes fine differentiations between individuals, providing a personal attribute profile pool of applicants useful for any admission committee and for empowering students’ strengths during studies.

A solid database of non-cognitive attributes opens the door to further research, which will take into consideration multiple variables, such as student knowledge, beliefs and aptitudes.

Training teachers to apply research methodology into practice and limiting the length of tools make the mission possible, interesting and useful. Figuring out how to collect valid measures of such data about large numbers of college students would be a major challenge.

As teachers occupy a central position in the educational enterprise, they become guardians of the country’s collective socio-cultural legacy. In the current context of teacher shortages, the authors offer a model that has the potential of improving recruitment of applicants for teaching and raising teacher quality.

No previous attempt that uses qualitative methodology for this purpose was found.

The world of work is changing and creating challenges and opportunities for the employment inclusion of young people with disabilities. In this article, the perceptions held by young adults with disabilities regarding participation in the future of work are examined.

One-on-one interviews were conducted with Canadian young adults (ages 18–36 years) living with a disability. Participants were asked about their thoughts regarding the impact of the changing nature of work on their labor market involvement and career aspirations. A thematic analysis was performed to identify and examine emergent salient themes.

In total, 22 young adults were interviewed; over half held secure employment. Career aspirations and work-related decisions were primarily shaped by a participant's health needs. The future of work was seen as a more proximal determinant to employment. Digital technologies were expected to impact working conditions and create barriers and facilitators to employment. Participants who indicated being securely employed held positive expectations regarding the impact of digital technology on their work. Participants working precariously held negative appraisals regarding the impact of digital technologies on employment opportunities. The role of technological and soft skills was critical to participating in a labor market reliant on advanced technology. Participants reported barriers to developing job skills related to their disability and their work arrangements.

This research highlights the importance of considering changes in the future of work, especially the digital transformation of the economy, in the design of initiatives which promote the employment inclusion of young adults with disabilities. Despite the significance of the changing nature of work, supporting health needs and encouraging access to secure work arrangements also remain paramount.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the possibilities of autoethnography as a commitment to care and a social justice agenda (Denzin, 2014:p. x).

Autoethnography can be seen as a “methodology that allows us to examine how the private troubles of individuals are connected to public issues and to public responses to these troubles” (Mills, 1959, cited in Denzin, 2014). This resonates strongly with the field of study: political care ethics, as the main focus is on how to promote a caring society. “Care” might be conceived broadly as everything the authors do to maintain and repair the world; i.e., as a social praxis.

Care ethics can benefit from autoethnography, as there is a strong(er) emphasis on “what matters,” what people care for, about and why, rather than on what is “right.” In this paper, the authors will thus explore the promises and pitfalls of autoethnography for a caring society, by connecting insights from theories on political care ethics and qualitative inquiry with the own autoethnographic performance at the International Conference on Qualitative Inquiry in May 2015.

Care ethics can benefit from autoethnography, as there is a strong(er) emphasis on “what matters,” what people care for, about and why, rather than on what is “right.”

This study of philanthropy donors in Appalachian Ohio was conducted with the purpose of understanding giving within a rural region. The research was initiated with an ultimate goal of increasing endowed assets in communities that are experiencing philanthropic poverty. The data collected from donors utilizing post-positivist qualitative research methods revealed not only donor giving rationale, but also steps community leaders can take to encourage giving communities and build philanthropic assets that will permit communities to help themselves.

The threatened status of social studies instruction in elementary schools demands strong methods instruction to preserve the subject. This threatened status and other factors create issues specific to elementary social studies methods instruction. Moreover, university-level methods instruction can be idiosyncratic due to the various educational and professional backgrounds of the instructors. This study examined individuals serving in the “dual roles” of inservice teacher and elementary social studies methods instructor. While teaching the methods, participants encountered issues related to methods students, the filling of dual roles, and the status of elementary social studies and field placements. In addition, filling these dual roles facilitated their methods instruction through their ability to relate/react to methods students’ experiences and concerns.

We describe a special education teacher and a history teacher who, together, gave specific learning disabled (SLD) and emotionally disabled (ED) students the opportunity to make historical documentaries in a self-contained special education classroom. Students were diverse in race, gender and disability. Findings indicated documentary making yielded positive outcomes for students as well as for the teachers. By selectively appropriating desktop documentary making technology, teachers engaged students in a technology-based project. Documentary making also opened opportunities for teachers’ close interaction with students, while still managing a potentially disruptive classroom. Students, who struggled with reading and writing, completed an engaging, lengthy, complex history project and exercised historical thinking skills. This study has implications for using documentary making technologies for engaging and refining students’ historical thinking skills.