Translating Autoethnography Across the AERA Standards

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to move readers toward a deeper understanding of and widened respect for autoethnography’s capacity as an empirical endeavor. An argument is presented in favor of autoethnography as empirical by translating information from its epistemological and methodological history across the AERA standards for reporting empirical social science research. Supporting evidence is drawn from samples of autoethnographic scholarship that emerged from an extensive literature review of first-tier, blind peer-reviewed journals with relatively low acceptance rates (i.e., 17% or less accepted for publication) that cater to an international audience of educational researchers. The journals include Harvard Educational Review, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Teaching and Teacher Education, Qualitative Inquiry, Urban Review, Educational Studies, Journal of Latinos and Education, and Race, Ethnicity, and Education. The article concludes by imagining a rubric that may assist researchers, editors, and reviewers in translating autoethnographic scholarship as credible and defensible empirical research. To date, no such article has worked to demonstrate this important connection to open the potential empirical publication venues for autoethnography in our real world of promotion and tenure decision making in the academy that hinges increasingly on the integrity of the blind peer-review process.