FROM ROUTINE TO RENEWAL: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION OF ACADEMIC VISITS IN INFORMATION MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

Abstract

Purpose: The reformation of two analytically distinct dimensions of an Information Management course students’ observable engagement with archival learning and the lecturers’ own pedagogical self-renewal is investigated through this collaborative analytic autoethnography based on a field-based academic visit to the National Archives of Malaysia. Method: This study employed a collaborative analytic autoethnographic approach, in which the lecturer-researchers collectively reflected on and analysed their experiences of the field-based academic visit. Multiple sources of data were incorporated to complete the study, including the lecturer-researchers’ personal journals, post-visit observational notes, memory-based reconstruction checked against contemporaneous records, and naturally occurring student responses documented during and immediately after the visit. The materials were revisited continually through coding for recurring patterns, comparison across sources, and interpretation according to Experiential Learning Theory, place-based pedagogy, and scholarship on emotion in learning. Rather than presenting student outcomes as measured learning gains, the study presents them as observed and expressed responses. Findings: There are three interrelated themes: Firstly, affective engagement reflected in students’ sense of responsibility, sustained attention, questioning, participation, and post-visit discussion. Secondly, theory-to-practice integration, as students observed and attempted the process of tissue repair and book-sewing in an authentic archival setting. Thirdly, teacher self-renewal arose from witnessing familiar disciplinary content become newly meaningful to students. The analysis shows how concrete experience, reflection, conceptual connection, and action overlapped during the visit, while the archive itself functioned as a pedagogically consequential place rather than a neutral venue. Contribution: The study extends field-visit research by foregrounding the reciprocal relationship between students’ situated learning and educators’ reflective renewal in archival and records management education, a context rarely examined through collaborative analytic autoethnography. It argues cautiously that well-designed academic visits may create conditions for both disciplinary meaning-making and renewed pedagogical purpose, without assuming that such outcomes are universal.