ABSTRACT
How do you translate a learning methodology conceived in one culture for implementation in another? What are the influences of founder myths, how are concepts developed in English by second or third language-speakers received by native speakers and how can an educational philosophy be reimagined without losing its essence?
Adopting an auto-ethnographic approach, Alison Fletcher explores the ways in which practitioners across different countries and continents communicate and how ideas operate below the level of language. She reveals an emergent model of change in which personality cannot be divorced from process and the values and priorities of early adopters have a major impact on how a methodology develops.
Drawing on her own experiences as a learner, leader and coach she seeks to help the reader understand the Team Academy process by showing its impact on her growth as a champion of change.
Auto-ethnographers use personal experience to describe and critique cultural beliefs, experiences, practices, and identities. They engage in rigorous self-reflection to explore the intersections between self and society, as well as showing what Art Bochner refers to as people in the process of trying to understand the meaning of their struggles so that they can work out what to do and how to live. (Bochner, 2016: p8).
In her paper Evaluating Ethnography Laurel Richardson suggests the following criteria for assessing autoethnographic writing (2000: p254):
Substantive contribution. Does the piece contribute to our understanding of social life?
Aesthetic merit. Does this piece succeed aesthetically? Is the text artistically shaped, satisfyingly complex, and not boring?
Reflexivity. How did the author come to write this text? How has the author's subjectivity been both a producer and a product of this text?
Impactfulness. Does this affect me emotionally and/or intellectually? Does it generate new questions or move me to action?
Expresses a reality. Does this text embody a fleshed-out sense of lived experience?
With these criteria in mind, Alison Fletcher has crafted a very personal contribution to the understanding of team learning, and how the story of Team Academy in all its guises can continue to be told in the coming years.
