This study comprises of a series of autoethnographic vignettes stemming from Karen’s life experiences that provide a snapshot of her quest for equality and fairness in her personal life, as well as her professional life as a primary school and special education educator. Karen later became a teacher of teachers, keen to share what she had learned with her peers. It was when she began educating other teachers that she became even more self-reflective with the most poignant question being, what causes one to change their beliefs, attitude, or way of thinking? The included vignettes encapsulate significant stories, starting from early childhood, to the motivation behind Karen’s teaching career and then the students that she met who shaped her adoption of the belief of equality and fairness for all. The vignettes provide the foundation for a qualitative study where one teacher’s journey of transformative and epiphanous change are analysed using autoethnography, reflexivity and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The study examines the value of tacit knowledge, and then segues to explore resonance with Dewey’s constructivism, Kolb’s experiential theory, Mezirow’s transformational education theory and Tang’s Synergic Inquiry. While these theories provide a foundation for how learning and personal transformation may occur and attempts to answer the aforementioned question; not one theory captured what Karen was seeking; which is: How does epiphanous, mind blowing, life affirming change occur? The author contends that to shift one's value’s paradigm, one needs to incorporate the essence of all of the above theories to create a new integrated model.
Effecting Epiphanous Change in Teacher Practice: A Teacher’s Autoethnography
