Using Collaborative Autoethnography for Teacher and Teacher Educator Development: Creating a Mediational Space for the Life–Reflection–Dialogue–Research Cycle

Abstract As three teachers and teacher educators across different geographical, sociocultural, and institutional contexts, we report how we used collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to create a mediational space where we externalized our lived experiences and reinternalized and recontextualized what we learned from one another (Golombek & Johnson, 2004) for shaping a virtuous cycle of life–reflection–dialogue–research. While recent applied linguistic research employing CAE has revealed its beneficial outcomes, the process by which CAE engenders development and the intricate dynamics of CAE participants deserves scholarly attention. Against this backdrop, we focus on the process of a CAE project rather than its results. Drawing on our 28‐month longitudinal data, comprising 168 individual narratives and 56 meeting transcripts, we reveal that two crucial, intertwined factors have significantly contributed to turning a CAE project into a developmental space for teacher educators. First, the participants' radical honesty and transparent vulnerability were instrumental in creating a supportive, nonjudgmental space where critical reflections, caring interactions, and new perceptions emerged. Second, their continued efforts to share everyday and professional experiences turned into transformative mediation through the process that we call “a ventriloquist move.” We conclude by discussing the implications of the lessons that this dialogic journey has taught us.