Creating My Own Living-Theory: An Autoethnographic-soulful Inquiry

This paper aims to present my educative-transformational journey as a part of my doctoral research project (Qutoshi, 2016), which started in 2013. In addressing the culturally disempowering nature of teacher education and research practices in the context of Pakistan, I embraced a transformative research paradigm. In so doing, I engaged with making meaning of my lived experiences through imaginative, innovative and creative ways of re/constructions of past and present epiphanies as a student, teacher, vice/principal, teacher/educator, and research supervisor, and envisioned a transformative teacher education and research practice for Pakistan. To this end, I employed unconventional, multiple data referents/tools, multiple logics, and genres so as to generate data sets within autoethnography as a key methodological referent in a multiparadigmatic research design space. Such critical reflection and inward-out observation, to my past and present, enabled me to envision future practices with an inclusive, empowering, and liberating view of teacher education to create a better world. Hopefully, my own living-educational-theory (Whitehead, 1989) with my embodied values of, ‘intention, humility for humanity, care of self and others with ecological consciousness, love and peace’, will be instrumental in achieving a morphing view of education that makes a difference in the lives of self and others with its ripple impacts.