By Natasha Gallagher Marron, graduate of the MEd in Adult Guidance Councelling
It is 10pm on a Sunday evening, I’m at home, sitting at my desk in a corner of the gaming room/office, ZOOM on my laptop and articles and YouTube tabs open on my PC. Unusually the door is locked, my husband is listening in the hallway, and the little boy is in his pyjamas waiting for me.
He needs me to come out, put him to bed and lie squeezing him, calming his nervous system with deep pressure to his muscles and gentle words to his mind until he falls asleep – because tomorrow is another school day.
But I’m not ready to do Mum and bedtime yet because I’m online at the final session of the weekend at the IAANI International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry. This is the Awards session.
On the screen the usual Zoom format displays the attendees…and now it is my turn. I look at the laptop and feel a jump in my chest and the desire to screenshot this, both on the laptop, and in my memory, forever. Tony Adams is speaking and the other participant screens in view are Carolyn Ellis, Art Bochner …. and me! The text on the screen announces the Outstanding Thesis Award winner, “Stories in the Border Country: An autoethnographic exploration of narrative identity and re-storying” … also me.
Reflecting on it now, two months later, it still feels surreal to have my research mentioned in the company of those I had quoted so often in that same research. It was through Carolyn Ellis’s Heartful Autoethnography that I first found this methodology of lived experience as evidence. I carried a copy of Evocative Autoethnography in both my handbag and my mind throughout my entire research journey.
I wrote this thesis as part of the MEd in Adult Guidance Counselling, and I started the MEd because I knew I needed a new path or at least a change from the old one.
In guidance practice we talk about self-awareness, who I am, where I am. Never one for reading maps or following directions, I’ve often found myself through processes of introspection and reflexivity. Rolling up my sleeves and digging in to where I am. The MEd journey led to wanderings in the Border Country, a liminal space where I found clarity in uncertainty, freedom in unknowing… and I found autoethnography.
I explored narrative identity, looked at the stories that I tell myself and that I tell about myself. This autoethnography, a story of my Stories, included poems, ponderings, memories. I discovered that different stories were dominant at different times in my life and some served me better than others. Autoethnography here is like a doorway, or perhaps a VR headset, where readers of my research don’t just know my stories but can come in, look around, and feel the “blood and guts” of the story. Then perhaps use it as a lens to go deeper into my world or to look inside themselves and their world as they experience the story.
I found the time, space, method and methodology – a reflexive practice in self-guidance – to give voice to my stories and light to my path.Like the often-invisible value of the unpaid work of parents and carers, I found hidden treasure in the stories vaulted in lived experience. Where it felt that what I did (who I was) was not seen, not counted, not valued, autoethnography presented a scholarly tool where what I do and who I am could be seen and might just be of value to others.…that’s how I got here.
Interested in postgraduate study in adult education?
Natasha’s journey highlights the value of postgraduate learning for practitioners who want to deepen their professional knowledge, strengthen their research capacity, and make a meaningful contribution in adult, community and guidance education contexts.
The Department of Adult and Community Education at Maynooth University offers a range of postgraduate pathways, including:
MEd in Adult and Community Education
For educators, community practitioners and professionals interested in adult learning, community education, equality, social justice and transformative practice.
Link: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/study-maynooth/postgraduate-studies/courses/med-adult-and-community-education
MEd in Adult Guidance Counselling
For practitioners interested in developing advanced knowledge and professional practice in adult guidance, counselling, lifelong learning and career development.
Link: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/study-maynooth/postgraduate-studies/courses/med-adult-guidance-counselling
Leave a comment