Metaphors from Alice in Wonderland illustrate firstly the ridiculous ...

These questions made me realise that a clear institutional identity consciousness (Brockmeier, 1997;
Thagard & Beam, 2004) would provide answers to my questions and possibly solve my
communication uneasiness and my dissonance, but I could not trace any guidelines, except through
the vague vision and mission statement of the institution.
In exploring the transformation of the UFS, this article focused on
The methodological vehicle I used to do so, and
What formed the starting point of this journey by viewing identity consciousness.
My methodological vehicle and my modes of travel
During this study, Alice and I travelled by tumbling, hiking, dreaming and daydreaming. In addition, I
travelled far from home, but not without a star, not without and hanging on to a dream. I fell head
over heels, travelled on bikes, buses, trams, trains, planes and boats. I travelled through the air and
under the ground, over hills and through valleys, on gated gravel roads, on inviting pastures, on
barricaded roads and on forced open roads.
Selecting an approach that would flexibly reflect my experiences and meaning-making
processes
As a postmodern predominantly lateral thinker who takes enormous pleasure in provocative,
imaginative and flexible least travelled journeys, I realised that I needed to select less conventional
research designs and methods to connect and construct all the concepts that I intuitively collect. I
have a story of my authentic self within a story of my institution‟s authenticity. I wanted to tell my
story with the support of theory in order to give others and myself a coherent account of my journey
and to do so against a trustworthy and credible referenced backdrop of an important era in the
history of the UFS and probably higher education (HE) in South Africa, if one considers the Soudien
Report of 2008 (Department of Education).
I also realised that I needed methods and designs in which I could accommodate limitless and openended
concepts in a logical manner and allow for a poststructuralist approach and process within a
phenomenological frame (De Bono, 1970) to enable me to interpret events and experiences,
construct meaning and make sense of our ever-changing institutional identity. Auto-ethnography (AE)
offered me a fluid research reporting method that accommodated my own experiences within a
multidimensional and multicultural institution, by allowing me to link theory to lived experiences. As a
visual artist and marketing officer, I used visual tools (Baars, 1997), documented media reports and
public speeches to guide my journey with the UFS towards a transformed institution.
The Visual Teaching Alliance‟s homepage confirms my experience: by being a visual/tactile learner,
artist and facilitator, I knew that the brain processes visual information 60 000 faster than text; that
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