Problematising ethnography and case study: reflections on using ethnographic techniques and researcher positioning

This paper was prompted by the question, what do we mean by conducting ‘ethnography’? Is it in fact ‘case study’ drawing on ethnographic techniques? My contention is that in many cases, researchers are not actually conducting ethnography as understood within a traditional sense but rather are engaging in case study, drawing on ethnographic techniques. Does that matter you might ask? Well it determines what we can expect to discover from a research project in terms of results and the unearthing of deeper complexities. I frame the discussion around a set of closely related issues, namely ethnography, case study and researcher positioning, drawing on ethnographic techniques and fieldwork relations. The original contribution of the piece and overall argument is that research can represent a hybrid form, and based on my own research experience, I propose a new term ‘ethno-case study’ that has advantages of both ethnography and case study.     

Muslim researcher researching Muslim youth: reflexive notes on critical ethnography,positionality and representation

As a Muslim researcher conducting a critical ethnography about/with/for Muslim youth and their school experiences, at this time of intensified Islamophobia and overwhelming discourses of hate against Muslims, the boundaries of the personal and the academic become blurry and confusing. This paper emerges from my subjective/academic experiences as a Muslim researcher, and my reflections on reflexivity, positionality and representation while conducting my ethnographic research in a high-school setting with Muslim youth. In this paper, I present a review of the different concepts of critical ethnography that are framing my research decisions and I highlight the complexity of the insider/outsider positionality for a Muslim researcher doing research with Muslim youth and the intersections of religion, gender, class, ethnicity and age in positioning her in the field. The paper presents different ethical dilemmas that I have encountered during the first six months of my fieldwork.     

Levels of knowing in ethnographic inquiry

Many texts that offer guidance to beginning researchers suggest that the competent ethnographer, while attempting to portray participants’ ways faithfully and accurately, should also demystify the research process through open revelation, self‐monitoring, and self‐evaluation. This paper illustrates the complexities of ethnographic inquiry by examining critically a study of literacy‐related activities of nursery school children and their teachers. Four stages of researcher development are proposed and described as a heuristic device in order to trace and expand issues germane to ethnographic research. The paper attends to some current concerns about contemporary discourse on research methodology, particularly how to make sense of the content‐specific issues that surface as a result of research, and also the experience itself of doing the research.     

FUTURE HOMEMAKERS AND FEMINIST AWAKENINGS: AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS A METHOD IN THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

The author describes a project that illustrates the use of critical ethnography as a research methodology in religious education. The article focuses on a facet of critical ethnography known as autoethnography. Autoethnography refers to the researcher's use of portions of her own life story in an ethnographic project. It allows the researcher to interrogate her reasons for engaging in a specific field, in this case, female adolescent voice. In her research with adolescent females, the author weaves memories of her own adolescence, especially those memories of significant adult mentors who helped her come to voice. Through the use of such autobiographical narrative, the researcher acknowledges the situated nature of her observations and reveals the connections between herself and the topic under study. In keeping with significant work in the field of anthropology, the author argues that this turn toward autoethnography allows for research that engages scholarly passion, enabling the researcher to effect change.     

Children's Interpretations of Biblical Meal Stories: Ethnographic Intertextual Voicing as the Practice of Hospitable Pedagogy

Based on the ethnography conducted by Magrini in three midwestern United Methodist congregations, this article examines the development of “ethnographic intertextual voicing,” which describes multiple contexts and the ways in which these contexts influence representation of the participants and in turn, create in a community of learning. The ethnography studied children's interpretations of biblical meal stories, Eucharist experiences, and reflections on daily meal practices. Magrini's hospitable pedagogy approach was applied with 25 children ages 5 through 11. The hospitable pedagogy approach created a teaching and learning environment through which ethnographic intertextual voicing emerged. The author argues that ethnographic intertextual voicing is influenced by familial, ethnic, and faith contexts, as well as those of the researcher, and can create a community of learning as a result of the ethnographic research itself through the practice of hospitable pedagogy as a research methodology.     

“The question of belief”: writing poststructural ethnography

This article engages current poststructural debates over ethnographic representation. It questions three types of ethnographic authority: the authority of empiricism, the authority of language, and the authority of reading. In performing a form of self‐speculative critique, the author moves behind the scenes of her own ethnography, Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach, to consider the problem of what poststructural theories “do” to ethnographic writing. Two related themes are elaborated in relation to how poststructural debates fashioned interpretive efforts: conceptual issues in the poststructural study of teaching and theoretical issues in the production of ethnographic narratives. Can there be an educational ethnography that exceeds the constraints of humanism? What if the ethnographer began not just to question the discourse of others but to engage the relation between the discourses that render ethnography intelligible and the ethnographic report?     

British school improvement research: the contribution of qualitative studies

Abstract

This article recounts the development of a relationship between a university researcher and a public school practitioner, and describes how changes in this relationship affected the research process itself. The article addresses three issues central to qualitative studies in education: the attempt to have research benefit practice; the formation of reciprocal relationships between researchers and those researched; and the writing of ethnographic accounts. The story is told in separate voices, alternating between the person researched and the researcher. Each voice describes how the relationship moved through six distinct, yet related, phases. Beginning with caution and skepticism, moving toward trust and self‐disclosure, each of these phases affected the conduct of the research study and its findings.     

Conceptualising the use of Facebook in ethnographic research: as tool,as data and as context

This paper explores what it means to engage as an ethical researcher in the conduct of critical ethnography. During the years in which this critical ethnography of new language learners in a midwestern high school, the ethnographer actively participated in the life of the site. This paper poses the question of what such active involvement means for research ethics. Much of the literature on research ethics deals with Internal Review Boards standards, but this paper takes a reflective, ethnographic look at the researcher's own ethical practices in order to articulate and examine the underlying principles entailed in the decisions to intervene or not in the ongoing life of the site.     

Rapport and friendship in ethnographic research

Most ethnographic fieldwork texts advise us to develop rapport with research participants. Fewer warn us of the problems that might ensue. This paper focuses on rapport's relationship to friendship in ethnographic work and discusses the instrumental role of rapport, the problematic role of friendship, and confusion in interpreting rapport‐building behavior. In traditional ethnographic research, rapport is a trust‐building mechanism that primarily serves the interests of the researcher. Friendship is different from rapport and can confound research objectivity. Yet the similarity of rapport‐building behavior to friendship‐developing behavior can cause misunderstandings and feelings of deception by the researcher and her#shhis others.     

Editorial

In this article I make two claims with respect to the ethics, truth and politics of qualitative research. The first is that confronting ethics, truth and politics in research is in effect a confrontation with the self. Although this may appear to be self‐evident, in qualitative research in particular, such an assertion needs to be consciously made and recognised.

The second related claim is that there is no single set of rules or practices that govern the ethics, truth and politics of a research project. In effect, the ethics, truth and politics of a research project are contextually driven and simultaneously contextually bound. This does not imply that a laissez‐faire ‘anything goes’ approach is defensible. On the contrary, the qualitative researcher is constantly and consistently called upon to consciously and deliberately engage with the ethical, truth and political implications of his research and writing. For the researcher ethical epiphanies are rare. Confronting and making an ethical decision is a demanding process, not an event in the life of a researcher. To extend this second point beyond the boundaries of South Africa, I draw on the works of local and international philosophers of education who offer similar arguments.     

Change from Within: an account of school‐based collaborative action research in an English secondary school

Abstract

The paper argues that for change in schools to occur, the active collaboration of significant actors within each institution is essential. Attempts to introduce change are more likely to succeed if they: recognise the interdependence of individual actors and their institutional settings; are conducted in language accessible to the participants; start with the work‐a‐day experiences and perceptions of individual actors, both staff and pupils; address the ‘social’ as well as the ‘material’ realities and barriers within the institution's unique culture. In an English secondary school with a tradition of school‐based in‐service activities, a two‐term collaboration between a Norwegian ethnographic researcher, the school's professional tutor, and a voluntary teacher action research group of staff, used a variety of approaches, to attempt to change classroom practice and perceptions about school ‘realities’. The article describes how the collaboration evolved and the highly personal nature of change from within based on self‐help. It presents an alternative to other attempts to bring about change, which are based on the withdrawal of actors from the setting which they are seeking to change.     

Investigating the lives of new teachers through ethnographic blogs

This article addresses key issues embedded within what some commentators are describing as a ‘virtual’ or ‘digital’ ethnography. Namely, that through the adoption of new (virtual) spaces for ethnographic inquiry it is possible to trouble previous notions of site, place, space and meaning when collaborating in online fields. This article is located within a growing international debate in the field of education concerning digital ethnographic methods. While addressing the issues of what is ‘virtual ethnography’ the article draws briefly upon research based on a period of online ‘field work’ which has lasted for 18 months, exploring the transitional habitual social practices of new teachers as they enter first-time full-time employment in the UK This inquiry positions both the researcher and participants as co-constructors of both the site of virtual interaction, and to a certain extent, as collective decision-makers as what contributes as field and field notes. The article will explore the emerging methodological practices behind this virtual ethnography, exploring the potential use of blogs as an ethnographic tool.     

Reconceptualising fieldwork in a netnography of an online community of English language teachers

Netnography is an approach to studying online communities and cultures to arrive at an ethnographic understanding. Drawing on our own experiences and methodological choices in a netnography of a multi-site online community of practice of English language teachers, known as Webheads in Action, this article illustrates how ethnographic fieldwork practices change when carried out with communities that exist primarily online. Focusing on illustrative examples from our 10-month netnographic fieldwork data, we argue that concepts of ‘the field, participant observation, interviews, and researcher survival skills’ are experienced in fundamentally different ways in netnography as opposed to in-person ethnography, which calls for reconceptualisation of fieldwork practices in online communities because of the dynamics of online environments and the use of web-based technologies.     

Pawns against the devil

Abstract

This article outlines the innovative methodology I have developed for a study of young women, classed‐hybrid‐subjectivities and Australian government policies of ‘mutual obligation’. This methodology further develops and disturbs existing notions of research methods involving young people. I argue that in order for research involving young people to be inclusive it needs to attend to issues of ‘sameness, difference and diversity’. Central to this study are the notions of feminst praxis (Lather ¹; Weiner ²) where the feminist‐researcher as feminist‐teacher grapples with issues of classism, racism, sexism, reflexivity and self‐reflexivity whilst attempting to take on and fulfill the roles of teacher‐researcher, researcher‐teacher in an ‘inclusive’ classroom.     

Trusting the method: an ethnographic search for policy in practice in an Australian primary school

The apparent simplicity of ethnographic methods – studying people in their normal life setting, going beyond what might be said in surveys and interviews to observe everyday practices – is deceptive. Anthropological knowledge is gained through fieldwork and through pursuing a reflexive flexible approach. This study carried out in a non-government primary school in Perth, Western Australia focused on the processes used by the teachers to implement reporting policy. The focus of this paper is not on the data of the research, but on the experiences of a researcher in the field for the first time. Despite being aware of what Schweder (1997) describes as the need to be open to the surprise of ethnography, the events which followed my first hours in the field still managed to disturb my equilibrium as they proceeded to unfold in unexpected ways. The factors which influenced the outcome of the research were serendipitous and for the researcher were vital in my initiation into ethnographic methods.     

Preparing Educational Researchers: The Role of Self‐Doubt

Educational scholars concur that research preparation courses should engage doctoral students with methodological differences and epistemological controversies. Mary Metz and Nancy Lesko recently published articles describing how courses guided by this aim engender self‐doubt for students. Neither scholar is entirely convinced that self‐doubt is educationally productive. Drawing on Hans‐Georg Gadamer's notion of Bildung, Deborah Kerdeman reframes the view of self‐doubt that Metz and Lesko assume and shows why self‐doubt can be transformative. Gadamer's argument regarding self‐doubt challenges constructivist views of agency and also demonstrates that engaging with difference is necessary for new understanding to emerge through conversation. Kerdeman concludes by considering why engaging in Bildung helps doctoral students become good educational researchers and why cultivating Bildung should therefore be an aim of research preparation courses that engage students with methodological differences and epistemological controversies.     

Too good at fitting in: methodological consequences and ethical adjustments

When embarking on ethnographic fieldwork, a researcher must carefully consider how to present oneself when entering the field. Presentations of self become particularly important when the culture under study maintains narrowly defined expectations for personal appearance and behavior. The more defined the expectations, the more important it is for the researcher to “read” those expectations and make deliberate choices concerning her appearance, body language, use of language, and overall style. Such choices can have tangible consequences concerning a researcher’s access to the field, in regard to both the physical access of the spaces and the social access of the lived experiences of participants within those spaces. In this article, I explore the use of my own self-presentation as a method of gaining physical and social access to ethnographic sorority spaces, and then consider those methodological consequences that may ensue when a researcher becomes “too good at fitting in.”     

A Feminist Posthumanist Multispecies Ethnography for Educational Studies

The animal or more-than-human turn in the humanities and social sciences has challenged nature/culture binaries in the fields of environmental education and early childhood studies, yet the field of educational studies has yet to confront its humanist roots. In this article, I sketch a nascent conceptual framework that outlines how multispecies ethnography, as a methodology informed by critical strands of feminist posthumanism, can begin to address and redress both social and species injustices in educational studies. To do this, I first provide a brief overview of educational humanism to situate the article within the animal and more-than-human turns in education. I then define multispecies ethnography and briefly review educational multispecies ethnographic research. Next, I sketch the conceptual framework, which is guided by feminist posthumanist theories of performativity and intersectionality, providing ethnographic examples from my own research projects and the research literature. I conclude by drawing out the implications for educational studies, with a consideration of how animal performativity and intersectionality open up new lines of inquiry to explore animal concerns, as well as social ones.     

With the eyes of others: an ethnography of an academic office

The author raises questions about ethnographic methodology through exploring the implications of using observations produced by his colleagues about his office as data for his research. This process blurred the boundaries between researcher, method and the object and subject of research. It meets some criteria for ethnography and not others, and does not evidence clear definitional boundaries for any sub-genre such as autoethnography or collaborative authoethnography. Besides raising definitional challenges and the blurring of roles in research, the study also illustrates how the methodology revealed tensions over collegial trust, boundaries and privacy. The author's colleagues exposed aspects of the author's identity that were opaque and even invisible to the author. The author accordingly raises questions about the locus of ethical concern. Thus, issues of roles, definition, trust, boundaries, privacy and method were entwined.     

Bringing our communities to the research table: the liberatory potential of collaborative methodological practices alongside LGBTQ participants

Research on and about queer people and topics in higher education continues to evolve, expand, and push boundaries on identity, policy, and programming, increasingly informed by our narratives and experiences. Thus far, this work has done little to dismantle the imposed binary of researcher and subject(s), relegating queer research and practice as something that is done ‘on,’ ‘to,’ or ‘for’ queer people, rather than ‘with’ them. Collaborative ethnographic methodologies and communities of practice (CoP) provide alternative modes of scholarship and practice that build queer people’s agency through active involvement in research and social change processes. Situated in two of our own examples, our purpose is to explore big questions and raise even more. This article calls for a further queering of LGBTQ research in higher education by utilizing collaborative methodologies such as CoP and collaborative ethnography to improve the strategies, practices, and knowledge of campus queer communities and imagining new democratic and liberatory realities together.