Reimagining Scholarly Impact Through Transformative Learning: An Arts-Based Collaborative Autoethnography

Abstract

In this collaborative autoethnography, we, two early career academics used arts-based methods to explore and transform our understanding of scholarly impact. We began by narrating the disorienting dilemma we experienced while preparing our review, tenure, and promotion portfolios. After a brief review of Mezirow’s transformative learning theory, we described our failed attempt to engage in collaborative autoethnography and our turn to transformative learning scholarship that prioritizes artistic ways of knowing. We resituated our collaborative autoethnography as an arts-based inquiry and described our collaborative process facilitated by poetic inquiry and narrative métissage. We then discussed how this arts-based collaborative autoethnography project afforded opportunities for us to engage in perspective transformation. Finally, we concluded with the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical contributions this project makes to transformative learning scholarship.