Literature survey

The dissertation operates under two complementary methodological framings. The primary methodology, established in the proposal and presented in the main document, is design-based research (McKenney and Reeves 2018) grounded in constructivist learning theory and self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan 2000). It supports the iterative-refinement structure of the four course iterations and surfaces the three curriculum-design principles (modularity, learner choice, continuous feedback) that the main document develops.

This appendix introduces a supplementary methodological posture: analytic autoethnography (Anderson 2006). Analytic autoethnography is not a replacement for design-based research; it is an additional analytic lens that treats my position as the complete-member instructor of the four iterations as a resource for surfacing theoretical findings the DBR analysis developed in the main document does not surface. The two methodologies operate at different levels: DBR structures the empirical work of designing and revising the curriculum; analytic autoethnography surfaces what an instructor at the early-entrant moment of generative-AI pedagogy can analytically claim about her own practice.

This chapter surveys the autoethnography family, explains why analytic autoethnography supplements (rather than replaces) the primary methodology, and lays out how Anderson's five criteria will be applied to evidence the supplementary posture.

B.1.1 The autoethnography family

Autoethnography emerged in the 1990s as a research genre in which the researcher is also the subject of inquiry. Reed-Danahay (1997) edited the foundational volume Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social and argued that the genre is best understood not as a single method but as a family of practices unified by the researcher's self-implication. Chang (2008) consolidated the methodological literature in Autoethnography as Method, naming procedures for data collection (personal memory, self-observation, self-reflection, and the use of external data such as artifacts and interviews) and for analysis (categorical aggregation, theming, narrative reconstruction).

Within this family, two principal variants emerged. Evocative autoethnography, articulated most fully by Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) in their Forum: Qualitative Social Research overview, treats the autoethnographer as both author and subject of a narrative whose value lies in its affective resonance, its vulnerability, and the reader's identification with the lived experience portrayed. Analytic autoethnography, articulated by Anderson (2006) in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, treats the autoethnographer as a complete member of a social setting whose insider position produces theoretical insight beyond what an external ethnographer could access. Anderson's variant retains the analytic posture of conventional ethnography while licensing the researcher's own experience as legitimate data.

Other variants in the family include collaborative autoethnography (Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez 2013), in which multiple researchers analyze shared experience; narrative ethnography (Tedlock 1991), which foregrounds the researcher's narrative voice within an ethnographic project; and critical autoethnography, which pairs personal narrative with political critique. These variants matter as context but are not the supplementary framework this appendix adopts.

B.1.2 Two analytic layers, working together

The dissertation's two methodologies operate at different analytic layers and produce different kinds of contribution. Design-based research, as the main document develops it, surfaces three curriculum-design principles (modularity, learner choice, continuous feedback) by tracking what curricular changes worked across the four iterations. Analytic autoethnography, as this appendix develops it, elaborates each of those three principles by treating my reflexive position on the same iterations as an analytic resource, surfacing the patterns within each principle that the DBR analysis does not surface. Both layers read the same corpus; what changes between them is the analytic question asked.

Anderson (2006) reserves analytic autoethnography for cases in which the researcher is a complete member of the social setting under study, has produced reflective and curricular data during the practice itself, and is positioned to generate theoretical insight from the insider's position. Each of these preconditions describes my situation. The complete-member-researcher condition is satisfied: I was the instructor of record for Iterations 1 and 2 (CV-1, CV-2) and the workshop lead for Iterations 3 and 4 (DK-3, DK-4, TR-4.D1 through TR-4.D5). The reflective-data condition is satisfied: I produced fifteen weeks of contemporaneous reflective journaling in Iteration 1 (WU-1.W01 through WU-1.W15) and substantial public-facing reflective writing across the cross-iteration channels (RE, KN-EP series, KP-EP series, WB-2026-03-03). The theoretical-analysis condition is satisfied by the three nameable findings that emerge in Chapter D (hallucination-as-pedagogy, compression-as-curriculum-maturation, multi-channel teaching practice), which the DBR analysis developed in the main document does not surface.

Together, the two layers offer a more complete account of what the four iterations produced than either layer alone. The main document's principles are practitioner-facing outputs (what other curriculum designers can adopt); the appendix's findings are scholarship-facing outputs (what the field can claim about pioneer instructor practice). A reader of both encounters the principles in the main document and the findings here.

Of the autoethnography family, analytic autoethnography is the variant that fits this configuration. Evocative autoethnography (Ellis, Adams, and Bochner 2011) would call for sustained narrative immersion in the affective dimensions of teaching, which is a different kind of supplement and would sit awkwardly alongside the main document's DBR analysis. Analytic autoethnography's analytic posture is directly compatible with the DBR primary framing; both seek theoretical traction on what the iterations made possible to understand.

B.1.3 How I apply Anderson's five criteria

Anderson sets out five criteria for analytic autoethnography. Each maps onto a section of this methodology chapter and a body of evidence in my artifact corpus.

Section B.3 applies each criterion in turn, evidences it against the corpus, and acknowledges where the evidence is thinner. The thinness acknowledgment is itself a move analytic autoethnography permits: criterion 2 (analytic reflexivity) is fully evidenced for Iteration 1 (the fifteen-week Weekly Updates Prelim Document is structured contemporaneous reflection) and partially evidenced for Iterations 2 through 4 through public-facing channels. I name this asymmetry rather than paper over it. Section B.3.2 characterizes the asymmetry precisely.

B.1.4 The relationship to the proposal's design-based research framing

The proposal my committee approved in October 2025 specified design-based research with thematic coding of interview data. The DBR portion of that framing has been retained in the main document; the iterative-refinement structure across the four iterations is the operational form DBR specified. What the proposal additionally specified (thematic coding of interview transcripts under IRB-governed conditions) was not enacted because the iterations did not produce the structured interview data thematic coding requires. The main document accordingly works from the artifacts the iterations did produce (curricular materials, surveys, workshop feedback) rather than from coded interviews.

This appendix's supplementary autoethnographic posture occupies the analytic space the unrealized thematic-coding work would have occupied. Rather than coding student interviews to surface themes, I take the instructor's reflexive analytic posture on my own practice and the rich artifact corpus that practice generated. The two paths to theoretical insight are different in their data and procedures, but they are alike in their goal: drawing analytic claims from the iterations beyond the descriptive level the curriculum-design principles operate at.

Section B.2 develops how this supplementation works in practice.