Who Do You Think You Are? The Influence of Working-Class Experience on an Educator in a Process of Becoming

Abstract

What does it ‘feel like’ to be working class and an academic? This chapter explores the significance of working-classness both from influences in childhood, and experiences as an adult, when entering academia. Asking what feelings are involved makes autoethnography the perfect lens for analysis, while immediately challenging the objectivity of a distanced neutrality preferred by much academic process. A provocation comes from the question, ‘who do you think you are?’ that reverberates through my life and reinforces that as autoethnographers, we become both subject and analysts; as such working-class subject analysts, the reflections amplify the importance of experiences lived and offer more than mere diversity in research methodologies. This is an account of what it feels like, and how these feeling have altered what my work in the academy looks like, how theory, pedagogy and practice have changed and how a working-class praxis emerged.

Citation

Shukie, P. (2022), "Who Do You Think You Are? The Influence of Working-Class Experience on an Educator in a Process of Becoming", Reilly, I.B. (Ed.) The Lives of Working Class Academics, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 123-134. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-057-420221009