The ‘inside’ of ageing: Autoethnography in critical geragogy

ABSTRACT

This article underlines the potential of autoethnography as interdisciplinary qualitative methodology to improve research and pedagogy in critical geragogy. It argues that autoethnography, broadly expanding and yet still only fairly legitimized approach, can serve as an ageism intervention, an act of activism, and sociocultural critique to raise awareness about gender- and age-based discrimination in an adult educational context. First-person representations framed within autoethnography allow for expression of the ways in which ageism can be experienced in academic and educational environments as well as in more mundane and private settings. Autoethnographical writing also has the power to question prevailing frames of thinking, subverts dominant discourses and ‘subjugated knowledges,’ and allows for plausible solutions to current and future challenges in adult education and later life. Exposing and defying stereotypical notions of aging can positively alter the social milieu, community well-being, and quality of life of older individuals. Autoethnography also helps reveal many unvoiced aspects about lifelong learning, gender dynamics, and the intricacies of aging, and move beyond traditional empirical and disciplinary boundaries. Critical insider views of scholars, students, and professionals involved in adult education, social work, and gerontology programmes can help foster new interdisciplinary knowledge and ameliorate their research, learning processes, and teaching practices.

Acknowledgments

I thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments that helped improve the manuscript. I extend my gratitude to Dr. Prof. Kate de Medeiros for introducing me to autoethnography and Dr. Prof. Sherick A. Hughes for kindly providing me with valuable material and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Ethnography is a method in which a researcher, during an extended period of time, employs interaction, field notes, interviews, and an analysis of documents and artifacts to examine a social group (insiders), a (sub)culture, or a cultural experience with an aim to better understand it and make it more familiar to outsiders (Adams & Herrmann, 2020; Adams et al., 2017). Generally, ethnographers examine and approach cultural communities and practices inductively, allowing observation to guide them, and then connect their findings, specific descriptions, and extensive field notes with more formal research (Adams et al., 2017). Autoethnography is one of the more recent forms of ethnography. While in ethnography a researcher writes about a group of people, autoethnographers write about themselves in relation to cultural differences between themselves and their subjects. Both methods seek to document human experience and re-present it to a broader audience.