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Autoethnography in Vocational Psychology: Wearing Your Class on Your Sleeve

Peter McIlveen, 1

Gavin Beccaria, 1

Jan du Preez, 1

and Wendy Patton 2

Abstract This article addresses reflective practice in research and practice and takes the issue of consciousness of social class in vocational psychology as a working example. It is argued that the discipline’s appreciation of social class can be advanced through application of the qualitative research method autoethnography. Excerpts from an autoethnographic study are used to explore the method’s potential. This reflexive research method is presented as a potential vehicle to improve vocational psychologists’ own class consciousness and to concomitantly enhance their capacity to grasp social class within their own spheres of research and practice. It is recommended that autoethnography be used for research, training, and professional development for vocational psychologists.

Keywords social class, autoethnography, critical consciousness, qualitative research

Social class has long been an issue of focus for vocational psychology; however,

recent literature has called for its renewed emphasis in the field (Blustein, 2006;

Diemer & Ali, 2009; Heppner & Scott, 2004; Whiston & Keller, 2004). The

1 University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia

2 Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Peter McIlveen, Faculty of Education, University of Southern Queensland, West Street, Toowoomba,

Queensland 4350 Australia

Email: mcilveen@usq.edu.au

Journal of Career Development 37(3) 599-615

ª Curators of the University of Missouri 2010

Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0894845309357048 http://jcd.sagepub.com

599

optimistic aim of addressing social class will ultimately require the delivery of

career development services directed at socioeconomic need and will depend on

psychological practices that are informed by research and theories sensitive to social

class. Accordingly, scholars and practitioners—and their teachers and supervisors—

will require various theoretical and professional means by which to take up that

challenge in an appropriately informed manner. We approach this challenge by present-

ing a qualitative research method that can be used by vocational psychologists to raise

awareness of their own social class phenomenology and to explore how they can inte-

grate class-related meaning into reflexive research. Doing so, we present another path

by which vocational psychologists may pursue the notion of critical consciousness

(Blustein, 2006; Blustein, McWhirter, & Perry, 2005; Diemer & Blustein, 2006).

Objectification of Social Class

Psychology, as a social science and a profession, has developed sophisticated

systems of education, training, supervision, credentialing, and registration. Take for

example the scientist–practitioner model, which embodies the notions of dispassio-

nate objectivity, technical proficiency, and professionalism. Although we flexibly

adhere to the positivist tradition and ideals of the scientist–practitioner approach

in our various professional, supervisory, managerial, and academic roles, we assert

that psychology’s scientific and professional systems and discourses require careful

consideration with respect to class. With its inherent principles of objectivity and

professionalism, the positivist paradigm in psychology entails concomitant estab-

lishment of boundaries between the psychologist and the individual client or

research participant as an ‘‘other.’’ With respect to social class, this process may risk

what Lott (2002) described as psychologists distancing from the poor.

Following the arguments of other scholars (e.g., Blustein, 2001; Lott, 2002;

Richardson, 2000; Roberts, 2005), we suspect that the enculturation of vocational psy-

chologists in the traditional positivist paradigm may inadvertently limit their capacity

to fully appreciate and operationalize a sensitive view of class in research, theory, and

practice. The enculturation of dispassionate objectivity concomitant with positivism

may well serve the development of a scientific professional, but it may concomitantly

suppress or limit a professional’s understanding and expression of his or her own per-

sonal background in terms of social class. We are not suggesting that individuals who

identify with the positivist tradition are necessarily dismissive or ignorant of issues

associated with social class; instead we wish to consider how vocational psychology

can further its sensitivity to social class through reflexive research and scholarship. A

similar case has been made successfully for multicultural competencies (e.g.,

Sodowsky, Taffe, Gutkin, & Wise, 1994), in that scholars and practitioners should

develop the skills, knowledge, and moreover, the self-awareness to better understand

and work with individuals and communities of various cultural backgrounds.

In terms of reflective practice, the notion of distancing (Lott, 2002) is of crucial

import; for it is at the juncture of the psychologist and the individual that we can

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observe and experience the interpersonal confluence of their respective personal

conditions and histories (McMahon & Patton, 2006). The formation of a genuine

relationship implies the inherent vulnerability of the psychologist; and it requires

consideration of personal dimensions that may be beyond the practitioner’s imme-

diate self-consciousness and awareness of countertransference. Accordingly, the

potential impact of the objectification of class by psychologists must be considered

further, perhaps through the lens of countertransference as suggested by Blustein

(2006). He asserted that practitioners may have ‘‘little exposure to their own inner

life with respect to working’’ (p. 290) and that the discipline should give attention

to understanding and sharing means of exploring countertransference.

In the frame of countertransference, one should consider that the positivist para-

digm lends itself to the objectification of the psychologist (and the client or research

participant) by the discipline’s reification of the objective in its own self-referent

rhetoric and by the psychologists himself or herself acting likewise on a personal–

professional level (i.e., performing to the expectation of objective behavior).

Accordingly, through an emphasis on professional objectivity, and by engendering

conditions of practice that psychologically separate the inherent dimensions of one’s

historical and current self, a psychologist can create a distanced and objectified other

in himself or herself and in his or her research participant or client. Furthermore, a

psychologist whose original social class is imbued with certain morals and values

pertaining to work and income may be unwittingly placed in a position of psycho-

logical conflict in which he or she must undertake professional thinking and activ-

ities that are incommensurate with those original and historical influences on his or

her identity formation. Having been professionally conditioned in the culture of the

positivist paradigm, he or she may be at risk of being ‘‘out of touch’’ with those

aspects of identity formation, which are unwittingly shared with clients and research

participants from or in a particular class. In psychologically retreating to the positi-

vist paradigm’s stronghold of objectivity and defending against the threat of realiz-

ing one’s own social origins, vocational psychologists may carry on unaware of their

own personal–professional strengths and limitations with respect to engaging with

issues of social class. Thus, despite its potential as an organizing framework for

training and practice, the positivist paradigm may inadvertently foster distancing

and diminish psychologists’ self-awareness of social class (Lott, 2002).

As a function of countertransference, a practitioner might inadvertently and with-

out malice project onto a working-class client his or her own unconscious conflicts

embedded in his or her past class-related struggles of a personal nature, which he or

she may not have sufficiently resolved. For example, a practitioner who overcame

his or her working class privations through individualized motivations of sheer

determination, anger, or revenge, may be at risk of judging working-class clients

who feel stuck in their lot in life as being somehow inadequate and not up to the

hero’s journey of rising up and out of their situation. Surfacing and resolving these

conflicts through a process of awareness raising may at least offer the practitioner—

and client—the psychological safety afforded by self-awareness: such that the

McIlveen et al. 601

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practitioner may take care of countertransference in counseling and supervision and

not engage in judgmental behavior (which could, for all intents and purposes, resem-

ble the objectified psychological logic and rhetoric of clinical diagnosis).

Critical Consciousness

Within vocational psychology, the process of sociopolitical development, mani-

fested as critical consciousness through conscientization, has been proffered as a

vehicle for improving the vocational aspirations and conditions of disadvantaged

client individuals and communities (e.g., Diemer, 2009; Diemer & Blustein, 2006;

Diemer & Hsieh, 2008). For example, psychologists committed to social justice may

work to raise their clients’ understanding of their social and historical conditions

(e.g., long-standing poverty, unemployment) with the purpose of assisting clients

to reformulate their history of disadvantage and received narrative of disempower-

ment, to a new narrative that features aspiration and sense of efficacy. In this article,

we do not address the conscientization of individuals and communities as clients or

research participants; instead we reflexively turn our attention to psychologists and a

process by which they may become self-conscientized of social class. We predicate

this objective with the assertion that a psychologist who is apprised of his or her own

social class will possess additional psychological scope for understanding the class

issues of his or her research participants, clients, and communities.

In his treatise for a psychology of work, Blustein (2006) recommended that scholars

develop an empathic understanding for that psychology: that they should aim to construct

an experience-near understanding of and connection to the issues and people of interest;

which equally applies to the development of experience-near understanding of social

class. Blustein anticipated that this aim would be questioned, due to objectivity being

ostensibly forfeited in the pursuit of subjectivity. To counter, Blustein argued that

researchers’ values are inherent in theorizing and research anyway, and moreover, that

empathic understanding would not necessarily threaten scientific validity. Blustein wrote

In my view, empathic introspection offers a means of reducing a critical gap in existing

psychological research pertaining to the distance that we create between our clients and

research participants and ourselves. Ideally, empathic understanding can help research-

ers to make their values more explicit as they are exposed to aspects of participants’

lives that may have been inaccessible or inadequately understood. (p. 240)

With respect to research and the development of theories that are established on

empathic understanding, Blustein recommended strategies such as including partici-

pants in research teams so that they may fully contribute and assist researchers in gain-

ing an enhanced understanding. Such inclusive research practices are well founded and

reflect accepted methods such as participatory research (e.g., Kidd & Kral, 2005).

Despite their inclusiveness, however, such approaches are unlikely to induce a genuine

understanding that is affectively experienced by the psychologist unless he or she

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reflexively reveals and articulates to himself or herself, his or her embedded subjectivity

in the process. Although including participants expands the potential for understand-

ing—and we emphasize our support for this approach—it is still inherently at risk of

a being a process of objectification of the participant or phenomenon as the other when

conducted on the foundations of a positivist paradigm, which necessarily emphasizes

objectivity. Instead, we aspire to an experience-near empathy, which is embedded in the

psychologist’s experience of himself or herself in relation to class.

To advance the Emancipatory Communitarian Approach to vocational psychology,

Blustein et al. (2005) recommended that scholars and practitioners ‘‘strive to instill a crit-

ical consciousness—not just among the powerless but the powerful and privileged’’

(p. 167). They went further by stating ‘‘critical consciousness must start with us’’ and

‘‘we advocate that students and practitioners read narratives from workers and students

who are struggling in their lives’’ (p. 168). Again, we concur and we suggest that research

methods that facilitate self-awareness offer a promising avenue toward reflexive research.

We suggest that the development of such important dimensions of critically self-

conscious practice necessarily requires the radical inclusion of the psychologist as

his or her own subject of interest with respect to his or her practices and social class.

This of course presents another round of challenges inherent in the subjectivity–

objectivity dual in scientific practice; but resolution of the conflict would transcend

the practitioner to a critical meta-consciousness. To advance toward the goal of fos-

tering critical self-consciousness, in the following section, we introduce autoethno-

graphy as a reflexive research method toward critical consciousness within

psychologists, their research, training, and practice.

In conceptualizing social class, we adopt the Social Class Worldview Model and

the Modern Classism Theory (Liu, Soleck, Hopps, Dunston, & Pickett, 2004), which

posit that social class is a multifaceted psychological phenomenon, rather than a sim-

plistic demographic and objectified descriptor based on income, occupation, or geo-

graphic location. In relation to the aforementioned notion of critical consciousness

and conscientization, Liu et al. (2004) suggest that

consciousness is the degree to which an individual has an awareness that he or she

belongs to a social class system and that this system plays out in his or her life; attitudes

are those feelings, beliefs, attributions, and values related to social class as the individ-

ual understands it and the related congruent behaviors . . . ; and saliency is defined as

the meaningfulness and significance of social class to the individual. (p. 104)

Although the Social Class Worldview Model consists of other theoretical domains,

consciousness, attitudes, and saliency constitute an individual’s phenomenal under-

standing of social class. In relation to the purpose of this article, our questions are: How

can a vocational psychologist’s awareness of his or her own social class consciousness,

attitudes, and saliency be developed so as to support the process of reflexive practice?

How can psychologists’ consciousness of class be enhanced to influence practice and

scholarship? How can attitudes toward class be reflexively explicated, deconstructed,

McIlveen et al. 603

603

and written into theoretical meaning? How can the relevance and importance of class be

highlighted to and by psychologists, not with class posited as just another variable to be

measured and accounted for, but as an avenue through which meaning and connection

can be developed between person, theory, and practice?

Autoethnography

Ethnography takes interest in what people do, make, use, and how they know and

describe their phenomenal worlds (Suzuki, Ahluwalia, Mattis, & Quizon, 2005).

Broadly conceptualized, autoethnography is a form of ethnography; with the defini-

tive feature of autoethnography being the researcher’s taking himself or herself as

the subject of inquiry. Autoethnography may be

research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to

the cultural, social and political. Autoethnographic forms feature concrete action, emo-

tion, embodiment, self-consciousness, and introspection portrayed in dialogue, scenes,

characterization, and plot. Autoethnographies may combine fiction with nonfiction.

(Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006, pp. 189-190)

The process of autoethnography typically entails a researcher (as the self-observed

participant of a study) describing elements of his or her life and experience in

explicit detail, and, moreover, in reference to a specific ethnographic topic and

integrating that experience nearness with theory.

The production of an autoethnographic study may involve autobiographical writ-

ing as a process or its collection as a form of qualitative data; however, autoethno-

graphy is not the same as autobiography. The latter is descriptive and oriented

toward the presentation of a life history whereas autoethnography is focused on a

specific phenomenon of theoretical interest and one which is embedded in a certain

context accessible by the researcher.

Furthermore, while the performance of autoethnography has the potential to engen-

der feelings of release as a confessional process for the author, autoethnography’s pur-

pose is the production of research in which person, phenomenon, and theory are

articulated. In this way, it may be distinguished from the clinical traditions of super-

vision and self-exploration of personal issues, which may influence practice. Although

autoethnography may expose psychological themes that constitute an individual’s

countertransference in terms of a research process, it does not act in the place of the

clinical analysis of countertransference. Confessions within supervision, or self-

confessions, are not ordinarily melded with theory toward answering a specific scien-

tific question or exploring an interesting phenomenon nor are they ordinarily aired in

public through the literature so as to inform other psychologists of the interpretation of

the experience of a specific phenomenon of interest to the discipline.

It is useful to consider autoethnography from the perspective of the philosophical

foundations of psychology as described by Ponterotto (2005) and Morrow (2005); and

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we do so here, albeit briefly. In their respective schemes, positivists and post-positivists

represent the traditional empirical psychology, with post-positivists offering some con-

cessions in terms of the nature and study of reality. Constructivists posit that there are

multiple constructed realities dependent on recursive relationships between perception

and context. Critical theorists posit a negotiable reality that is mediated by power

dynamics embedded in language, culture, and history. The values of the researcher

inherently drive critical research along with a desired social and political outcome. Con-

structivists recognize their values, yet attempt to contain their potential to influence the

interactions between observer and observed. McIlveen (2008) suggested that autoeth-

nography would best reside within the remit of constructivist–interpretivist and

critical–ideological paradigms as described by Ponterotto and Morrow. Both paradigms

would admit autoethnography as a method but with varying emphasis on the place of the

researcher’s subjectivity and experience of the phenomenon in view.

In methodological terms, two types of autoethnography may be identified.

Anderson (2006) described analytic autoethnography, an approach which is more

akin to post-positivist psychological science and evocative autoethnography, which

represents a style better related to constructivist and critical paradigms for psychol-

ogy and advocated by the scholars Ellis and Bochner (Ellis, 2000; Ellis & Bochner,

2000). The analytic approach tends toward the objective analysis and rhetorical style

familiar in positivist psychology and involves reporting in an objectified style

whereas evocative autoethnography aims to achieve empathy and resonance within

the reader and may even manifest in literary styles such as poetry.

Autoethnography has been established as a qualitative research method in the dis-

ciplines of anthropology, education, and sociology (Anderson, 2006; Ellis &

Bochner, 2000; Etherington, 2004; Roth, 2005; Spry, 2001) and has, for example,

been used to investigate the reflexive experience of research (du Preez, 2008;

Humphreys, 2005; Vickers, 2002) and research supervision (Ellis, 1999). It has also

been applied as a pedagogical method toward conscientization in the field of school

teacher education (e.g., Austin & Hickey, 2007). Unfortunately, there are few exam-

ples of autoethnography within the psychology literature (e.g., Langhout, 2006; J. L.

Smith, 2004). To partly fill that void, we now present a summary of the research pro-

cess of performing an autoethnography written by the first author (McIlveen, 2007).

Performing Autoethnography: An Example of Practice

The Case

The first author completed his PhD on the development of a new career assessment

product My Career Chapter (McIlveen, 2006). In conducting his PhD research, the

first author and his doctoral supervisor agreed that the research endeavor should be

critically reflexive: revealing the candidate’s motivations and personal saturation in

the research processes. They asked these reflective questions of the project: How

was the career assessment product under investigation in this PhD project brought

McIlveen et al. 605

605

into being? Why were particular theories chosen for the research project? These

ostensibly ordinary questions for a candidate engaged in doctoral research transpired

into vigorous personalized reflexivity, which became a study in itself. Ultimately,

his commitment to reflexivity drew the researcher toward the nexus of the topic

of his research, the nature of his profession as a psychologist, and his early origins

and social class. Accordingly, the PhD candidate and his research activities as a

vocational psychologist became the topic of ethnographic interest, and autoethno-

graphy was an ideal research method for the reflexive process.

Data Collection and Analysis

To study himself as part of the research project, the author gathered together all of

the data necessary for the performance of autoethnographic writing, which may

entail a variety of sources of qualitative data (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). There were

tangible, material data (e.g., notes taken during doctoral supervision sessions, old

papers written in other degree programs, music, refereed published papers, and

photographs). There were periods of structured reflection and periods of sponta-

neous recollections, both associated with various emotional experiences. To facili-

tate reflection, the author used the stimulating questions by Watson (2006), which

enable practitioners to consider their values, background, and influences on practice

(e.g., Where do your values and beliefs come from? How do your family, your gen-

der, and your multicultural background affect your values?). These questions effec-

tively operationalized aspects of consciousness, attitudes, and saliency identified in

the Social Class Worldview Model (Liu et al., 2004). Conversations with colleagues

and friends (cf., Tillmann-Healy, 2003) also provided additional sources of data, as

well as serving as reference points to determine the truthfulness of recollections.

The reflexive approach to the PhD candidate’s understanding of his research was

based in a supervision milieu that was conducive to exploring the subjective and per-

sonal process of conducting research in an objective and objectified discipline. For

example, discussions between the candidate and the supervisor focused on their

shared historical experiences with respect to class; their respective travails and tran-

sitions across classes, which were imbued with some degree of angst; and how their

own evolving critical consciousness brought the discipline, and its power structures

and dynamics, into focus. The collection and iterative analyses of data in this way

were both reflexive processes of the research endeavor and products of the conscien-

tization of his class and his practice of research in vocational psychology. The pro-

duction of a written narrative was also part of the analysis process, but this is dealt

with as a process of reporting the research.

Reporting the Research

There are a number of ways to write up autoethnography particularly in terms of the

difference between analytic and evocative methods (cf. Anderson, 2006). The author

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of the example described here (McIlveen, 2007) deliberately set out to write in a

style that was consistent with the recommendations and reporting guidelines for qua-

litative research in counseling psychology (viz., Morrow, 2005). This approach was

taken so as to provide familiar intellectual boundaries associated with psychology’s

conventions—for both author and prospective reader. Morrow’s recommendations

for a Method section for qualitative research slightly, yet meaningfully, differ from

the usual stipulations and entail the additional subsections of Philosophical assump-

tions or paradigm underpinning the research and Researcher-as-instrument state-

ment. Completion of both subsections requires exposure of the researcher’s

positioning so as to honestly inform the reader of the researcher’s perspective, thus

enabling the reader to consider the analyses and conclusions in a more speculative or

critical light. When using autoethnography as the research design, the researcher-as-

instrument statement becomes the main body of the research project itself. In the

example used here, in which the notion of scientist–practitioner in vocational psy-

chology was brought into focus, the author first established himself as a vocational

psychologist to fulfill the autoethnographic criterion of being a complete member

researcher (Anderson, 2006).

The manuscript was written over a period of approximately 6 months. Its writing

process commenced with a structured approach of setting up the manuscript accord-

ing to the conventional reporting format, as described previously. Throughout the

writing process, the autoethnography itself became part of the reflexive process of

data collection and analysis. Narrative threads were pursued to their conclusion;

as the writing process progressed through iterative cycles of checking and returning

to data, themes were derived from the data and the writing process itself. Draft on

draft became a growing autobiographical account, which threaded back into theory.

Results and Discussion

At its end, the autoethnography revealed the life of a young rural, working-class boy

who set out to overcome his experience of stigma and class oppression. Emerging

from the text was a personal story in which the author’s early experiences of social

class became a predominant feature and eventually the plot of the narrative analysis.

Examples of text from the narrative analysis subsection Working-class Boy Made

Good exemplify the author’s transition from rural working-class adolescent to met-

ropolitan middle-class profession:

I was raised the son of an iconic Australian sheep shearer, in a working class family,

and one without much money. Whilst shearers enjoy elevated status within the lore

of the Australian working class as the quintessential ‘‘hard-worker’’, they have also

been the target of negative stereotypes promulgated throughout a century of industrial

struggle. . . . My first paid employment was as a roustabout working in sheep shearing

sheds. This semi-skilled occupation is very much the lowest of the pecking order of the

Australian wool industry. (McIlveen, 2007, p. 301)

McIlveen et al. 607

607

Although successful in his transition, the author revealed moments of doubt that

were akin to the experiences of participants in a grounded theory study of aca-

demics’ transitions into the world of higher education from their outside cultures and

class (Nelson, Englar-Carlson, Tierney, & Hau, 2006); for example:

I can now speak dialects of the Australian rural working class and the metropolitan

middle-class with utter confidence; my social self changes according to context and

I mostly feel emotionally secure and comfortable with both. This class-jumping is all

much to the paradoxical horror of my father, who, on the one hand is deeply proud of

my achievements within the middle-class, but in the spirit of working class egalitarian-

ism so stereotypically Australian, is equally dismissive of my social status and likes to

bring me ‘‘down a peg or two’’ in a playful laconic fashion, not hurtfully, but to ensure

that his egalitarian values instilled within me are not lost or diminished. (McIlveen,

2007, p. 302)

In the discussion section of the study, the author wrote implications for theory,

research, and practice. The author concluded that his motivations and personal

saturation in the research endeavor was partly related to his overcoming class bar-

riers. Although personally and professionally confronting, especially at time of sub-

mission for publication (cf. Vickers, 2002), the resultant autoethnography drew a

narrative between the objective abstractions of a specific scientific theory and the

technology of the PhD produced by the author through the profoundly personal lived

experiences of the author; thus revealing his consciousness of class and its nexus

between theory and practice. In this example, it was the autoethnographic process

of reflecting on and writing about the personal, historical dimensions of class, which

fostered the development of critical consciousness in relation to a vocational psy-

chologist’s experience of his class background and the influence of that back-

ground—presently felt—on his research practices. Having accounted for his

transition across classes, the author recommended that vocational psychology would

benefit from learning how scholars develop or evolve theories and practices not sim-

ply on the basis of traditional empirical terms but additionally in terms of the scho-

lars’ being embedded in their own culture and history.

Discussion

Among the difficulties faced by persons in transition between one social class and

another is the awareness of being different. Individuals in transition tend to attempt

to gain an understanding of the particular and peculiar practices and conventions of

the group they wish to join, to know how to behave in the hope that they will be

‘‘accepted or least tolerated’’ (Schutz, 1971, p. 91). Through autoethnography, the

first author described his own socialization in a rural, working-class world, and the

difficult processes he undertook of behaving, consciously, in the ways of the middle

class to make a place for himself in the professional world.

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Autoethnography is a ‘‘self-narrative that critiques the situatedness of self with

others in social contexts’’ (Spry, 2001, p. 710). From a social constructionist or crit-

ical/ideological perspective, autoethnography presents an opportunity to investigate

the dialogical and relational aspects of identity and work—in the case presented

here, it was the nexus of identity as vocational psychologist and social class. Scho-

lars and practitioners are privileged to be on the ‘‘inside’’ of the professional dis-

courses (e.g., theories and practice technologies). Through autoethnography, they

may bring other spheres of their existence to theory by publicly presenting a self-

case study that intimately informs theory and melds a narrative that cannot be

achieved through the intellectual process of distancing between researcher and sub-

ject. Who better could write about the psychological theory of social class than a

vocational psychologist who understands the personal phenomenology of a felt

experience inherent in a specific social class in which he or she lived or lives? Thus,

autoethnography is a form of enquiry from the insider’s perspective.

Maslow (1966) argued for a psychology of science in which the scientists as per-

sons were studied. Similarly, Runyan (2006) explored the personal side of the psy-

chology of science and argued that the psychobiography of well-known

psychologists provides a way of understanding the science of psychology: a psychol-

ogy of psychology. Indeed, Runyan highlighted the very personal nature of the per-

formance—the doing—of psychology by outstanding figures such as Freud and

Skinner. Although autoethnography is, as a research method, not autobiography per

se, there are parallels with the application of psychobiography for understanding

how individual psychologists engaged in the science of psychology. As a reflexive

self-study, autoethnography provides the psychologist with a method to understand

himself or herself in the performance of his or her research into a particular phenom-

enon of interest, which, like himself or herself, is embedded in a sociocultural con-

text: thus, a critical self-ethnography interpreted in terms of psychological theory.

Furthermore, it is here the psychologist can provide an insider’s perspective on what

may only be accessible in terms of objective observations made from the outside and

therefore transcend the objective–subjective divide.

Limitations

Is autoethnography subjective? Yes. However, if done rigorously, autoethnography

may secure the conditions of sound qualitative research with the constructivist–

interpretivist or critical–ideological paradigms described by Ponterotto (2005) and

Morrow (2005). Evocative autoethnography will never fulfill the requirements of the

positivist paradigm as a research method; although analytic autoethnography may

have some scope within the remit of post-positivist research. We do not aim to over-

state the case for autoethnography and emphasize that it is but one possible way to

conduct reflexive research.

A crucial, pragmatic limitation on autoethnography, however, is the dearth of the-

oretical and methodological guidance on how to perform and report an

McIlveen et al. 609

609

autoethnographic study within the discipline of psychology. From a psychological

perspective, we tentatively suggest that autoethnography may be considered a form

of self-reflective, psychobiography (Runyan, 2006), narratology (Hoshmand, 2005),

or narrative analysis (Smith & Sparkes, 2006). Perhaps by beginning at these theo-

retical locations—and they may not be ideal—the field may be in a better position to

appropriate and reconstruct the method into a form more familiar to psychology.

Until psychology has generated its own criteria of epistemological merit specific

to autoethnography, we may borrow from other disciplines (e.g., Anderson, 2006)

and apply higher order criteria used for qualitative research in psychology (e.g.,

Morrow, 2005; Parker, 2004).

Potential Applications. In this article, we have suggested that autoethnography can be used as a form of learning for reflexive research and practice and developing

awareness of class-related issues and one’s experience of class. A number of scho-

lars have suggested that practitioner training and learning is an ideal site at which to

instill awareness of issues pertaining to social justice and class (Gainor, 2005; Han-

sen, 2003; Nelson et al., 2006; O’Brien, 2001; Patton & McMahon, 2006; L. Smith,

2005). Diemer and Ali (2009), for example, suggested that class and classism could

be addressed in the process of training in career counseling. In this way, autoethno-

graphy could be used as an advanced training for graduate students or professional

development activity for psychologists in the field, so as to contribute to their capac-

ity to better understand social class and act in a more informed manner while per-

forming their counseling. As autoethnography is a qualitative research method

requiring abstraction from personal experience to theory and practice, to scholarly

dissemination, graduate students’ and psychologists’ training in the method could

entail scaffolding through the application of experiential learning activities, which

potentiate self-awareness (Minor & Pope, 2005), such as the activity, which enables

graduate students to explore their scholarship as scientists and practitioners

(Croteau & McDonnell, 2005). Such learning activities could then be focused on

specific phenomena of interest with the requirement that the learner integrate his

or her experience with theory.

In this article, we have focused on social class and autoethnography. The method

may be extended to other issues relevant to the development of critical conscious-

ness (e.g., ethnicity, gender, sexuality, body), or applied to unusual experiences that

may not be accessible to or frequently experienced by the mainstream professional

population and, as such, go without theoretical interpretation and communication in

the literature. This offers promise to psychologists who seek to better understand the

psychology of a phenomenon, which is to manifest reasons beyond their scope. For

example, a person of one race or gender can never truly know, in a positivist sense,

the experience of living a life within the skin of a person of another—and vice versa.

Similarly, psychologists practicing career development in the field might be per-

sonally exposed to phenomena that do not readily manifest in university clinics or

teaching settings, which facilitate research activities. These may be rare or

610 Journal of Career Development 37(3)

610

inaccessible events or experiences, presumably of interest to other psychologists

(e.g., experiencing situations of routine or unpredictable extreme personal threat

or violence within a workplace; suffering with an intractable illness or disability

which affects on occupational performance; psychologists of one ethnic or national

background transitioning their practice to different ethnic region or nation). The

limitations on access to such experiences may concomitantly limit the documented

and theorized psychology of a particular phenomenon. Reading and hearing our

colleagues’ experiences written in autoethnographic form gives some scope for

others in the discipline to better understand the phenomena when it is interpreted

in terms of psychological theory and practices.

Conclusion

Some scholars question the capacity of the field of career development to have an

impact on the problems presented by social class, because psychological theories

simply do not adequately deal with class as a lived experience (Richardson,

2000). Unfortunately, this position may be reinforced by the dearth of literature

on the issue of psychologists’ training, understanding, and personal experience in

appreciating different social classes (Lott, 2002; Nelson et al., 2006; L. Smith,

2005; Smith, Foley, & Chaney, 2008), let alone the relation of class to theory and

practice in vocational psychology specifically (Blustein, 2001; Diemer & Ali,

2009). To partly answer the challenge of the discipline’s capacity to impact on social

class, in this article, we have introduced the qualitative research method autoethno-

graphy as a way to facilitate reflexive research and practice. We suggest that

autoethnography has the potential to develop within vocational psychologists their

critical self-consciousness of issues related to social class in theory, research, and

practice; and through excerpts of a case example have indicated how it transformed

the research and practice of a vocational psychologist.

Through its depth of critical self-reflection and writing about oneself in context of a

phenomenon of interest and theory, autoethnography also presents an opportunity for

scholars and practitioners to bring theory and practice closer together (cf., Murdock,

2006) as a genuinely personalized synthesis. Of course, autoethnography requires

ongoing theoretical and practical development before it can be appreciated as just another

qualitative research method within the disciplinary realm of vocational psychology.

Declaration of Conflicting Interest

The authors had no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publi-

cation of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this

article.

McIlveen et al. 611

611

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Bios

Peter McIlveen is a senior lecturer with the Faculty of Education at the University of

Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia. He is a registered psychologist. He teaches into

graduate programs and specializes in career development studies and is program coordinator

of a graduate degree in higher education practice. He is interested in process and outcome

research into career counseling and education. He serves as editor of the Australian Journal

of Career Development. Prior to this academic role, he was manager of Careers and

Employment at the same university. He enjoys his garden, particularly growing fresh fruit and

vegetables for his children.

Gavin Beccaria is a lecturer in clinical and counseling psychology at the University of South-

ern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia. He is a registered psychologist. He teaches into both

the undergraduate and graduate programs in psychology. His current research interests

include evaluating clinical and counseling interventions, problem-solving therapy, and the

interface of clinical and counseling psychology with organizations. Prior to this academic

role, he was the director of psychology in Toowoomba Health Service and managed a depart-

ment of 35 psychologists. He is married, with two children, he is a keen follower of cricket,

and is the coach of his son’s cricket team.

Jan du Preez is a practicing counseling psychologist and the manager of counseling section

of student services at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia. Prior to

this role, he worked in a variety of settings in South Africa, across the disciplines of educa-

tional, counseling, and organizational psychology. He has a research interest in the factors

contributing to student success at university, with a particular interest in applying narrative

approaches to facilitating student self-efficacy. He enjoys listening to music and spending

time with his family.

Wendy Patton is Executive Dean, Faculty of Education at Queensland University of

Technology, Brisbane, Australia. She has taught and researched in the areas of career devel-

opment and counseling for many years. She has coauthored and coedited a number of books

and is currently series editor of the Career Development Series with Sense Publishers. She has

published widely with more than 100 refereed journal articles and book chapters. She also

serves on a number of national and international journal editorial boards. She enjoys

environmental landscape revegetation.

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