"Why nobody told me and why it would have been impossible to do so until now" : an autoethnographic inquiry into teaching and learning towards social justice in early childhood teacher education
In this paper, a personal narrative autoethnographic methodology is used to begin mapping a transformative learning journey towards teaching and learning for social justice in early childhood teacher education. In autoethnography, personal lived experience is the primary source of data. This inquiry explores two stories of personal transformative learning using a journey metaphor to structurally frame the inquiry. Through a process of writing as inquiry (Richardson, 2003) and emotional introspection (Ellis, 1991) and using a conceptual framework based on postmodern perspectives, this autoethnographic research paper reveals the steps toward critical consciousness (Freire, 2006) taken by the author/researcher-a student in early childhood teacher education-as she uses personal narratives of lived experience in early childhood teacher education as primary data to explore the implications of this transormative learning process to explore themes around teaching and learning towards social justice in early childhood teacher education programs.
