A Critical Co/Autoethnographic Exploration of Self: Becoming Science Education Researchers in Diverse Cultural and Linguistic Landscapes

in Bazzul, Jesse; Siry, Christina (Eds.) Critical voices in science education research: Narratives of academic journeys (2019)

This chapter illustrates the process of collaborative autoethnography (co-autoethnography) we used to construct space, in order to critically explore ourselves, and the contexts we study. Through a co ... [more ▼]

This chapter illustrates the process of collaborative autoethnography (co-autoethnography) we used to construct space, in order to critically explore ourselves, and the contexts we study. Through a co-autoethnographic process, we aimed to better understand our positioning in our lived experiences and to generate an understanding of how reflective critical research approaches could transform us, as well as the communities in which we were immersed. In this chapter, we share the process of our collective analysis of autoethnographic narratives (Coia L, Taylor M, Co/autoethnography: Exploring our teaching selves collaboratively. In L. Fitzgerald, M. Heston, D. Tidwell (Eds.), Research methods for the self-study of practice (pp. 3–16). Netherlands: Springer, 2009), which stemmed from our experiences living and conducting education research in multilingual and multicultural contexts. Our ethnographic method of data collection, analysis, and interpretation was generated from our journeys as researchers – moving to, living, and conducting research in culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) environments. We share this process, and some lessons we learned, with the hope that other researchers may find co-autoethnography a cathartic methodology to explore and challenge their own perspectives relative to cultural and linguistic diversity in their lives and in their research. [less ▲]

Enhancement of COPD biological networks using a web-based collaboration interface

in F1000Research (2015), 4(32), 1-22

The construction and application of biological network models is an approach that offers a holistic way to understand biological processes involved in disease. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD ... [more ▼]

The construction and application of biological network models is an approach that offers a holistic way to understand biological processes involved in disease. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive inflammatory disease of the airways for which therapeutic options currently are limited after diagnosis, even in its earliest stage. COPD network models are important tools to better understand the biological components and processes underlying initial disease development. With the increasing amounts of literature that are now available, crowdsourcing approaches offer new forms of collaboration for researchers to review biological findings, which can be applied to the construction and verification of complex biological networks. We report the construction of 50 biological network models relevant to lung biology and early COPD using an integrative systems biology and collaborative crowd-verification approach. By combining traditional literature curation with a data-driven approach that predicts molecular activities from transcriptomics data, we constructed an initial COPD network model set based on a previously published non-diseased lung-relevant model set. The crowd was given the opportunity to enhance and refine the networks on a website (https://bionet.sbvimprover.com/) and to add mechanistic detail, as well as critically review existing evidence and evidence added by other users, so as to enhance the accuracy of the biological representation of the processes captured in the networks. Finally, scientists and experts in the field discussed and refined the networks during an in-person jamboree meeting. Here, we describe examples of the changes made to three of these networks: Neutrophil Signaling, Macrophage Signaling, and Th1-Th2 Signaling. We describe an innovative approach to biological network construction that combines literature and data mining and a crowdsourcing approach to generate a comprehensive set of COPD-relevant models that can be used to help understand the mechanisms related to lung pathobiology. Registered users of the website can freely browse and download the networks. [less ▲]

Becoming Researchers in Multilingual Contexts: A Co/ Autoethnographic Exploration. In the symposium, International Perspectives on Multilingual Contexts in Science Education Research and Practice

Presentation (2015)