Generating ethnographic research questions: an anthropological contribution to the study of higher education

As part of recent complex transformations, it seems that higher educational organisations are being forced to reorganise, standardise and streamline in order to survive in the new political and economic context. How are ethnographers in general going to approach these contemporary phenomena? By drawing on the conceptual history of anthropology, the aim of this article is to generate ethnographic-oriented research questions concerned with higher education. The first part of the article provides an ethnographic background, while the second part focuses on Paul Willis's reasoning on ethnographic imagination, as a prerequisite for generating alternative research questions. The third part makes explicit anthropologist Maurice Godelier's theoretical imagination, carving out some specific theoretical parts which may be used in the generating process. The conclusion then suggests a number of questions to be asked by future ethnographers of higher education. The questions are followed by a reflection upon the consequences of doing ethnography within contemporary higher education settings, which are increasingly dominated by policy-makers; ethnography is thus to be seen as an intervening instrument.     

The practice of writing ethnographic fieldnotes

Fieldnotes are central to ethnographic practice, yet there is surprisingly little written about how fieldnotes are constructed. This article reports the results of some interviews with four well-known ethnographers of education who were questioned about their practice. It is designed to be a resource for those new (and, maybe not so new) to ethnography.     

Ethnography: problems and prospects

This article reviews a range of difficult issues that currently face ethnographic research, and offers some reflections on them. These issues include: how ethnographers define the spatial and temporal boundaries of what they study; how they determine the context that is appropriate for understanding it; in what senses ethnography can be—or is—virtual rather than actual; the role of interviews as a data source; the relationship between ethnography and discourse analysis; the tempting parallel with imaginative writing; and, finally, whether ethnography should have, or can avoid having, political or practical commitments of some kind, beyond its aim of producing value-relevant knowledge.     

Universities,civil society and the global agenda of community-engaged research

This article explores a key point of tension in contemporary discussions of community-university research engagement. Two perspectives are discussed. The first suggests that changes in the nature and structure of research have helped create democratic research spaces and opportunities within the university for communities. In this emerging (global) knowledge democracy movement, community-based researchers are increasingly seeking to connect lessons learned in local settings to the global context. The second perspective situates such developments in the context of the knowledge economy of higher education and suggests that community engagement is also developing in a manner that supports the advance of knowledge capitalism. The decisive tension is that universities around the world are being encouraged by governments to assume greater responsibility for economic development and to translate knowledge into products and services for the market – whilst at the same time being tasked to work with communities in alleviating the social and economic excesses of the market.     

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.     

Further education sector governors as ethnographers: five case studies

This paper considers how governors in the English Further Education and Skills (FE) sector examined their practice as ethnographers. The paper locates both FE governance and ethnography within the challenges of the performative and Panoptic environments facing English education. In doing so, the paper explores how the informants’ mobilisation of ethnographic methods revealed a novel lens on both governance and the role of ethnographer. Employing Grounded Theory, the paper considers how the participants negotiated philosophical questions regarding evidence, objectivity and truth. The paper suggests that despite the deep-seated complexities inherent in conducting ethnography in performative contexts, the participants generated data which painted a unique and revealing picture upon their practice as governor and researcher.     

Observant participant: carnal sociology and researcher identity in religious educational spaces

The ethnographer’s embodied action during research is a complex of habit, belief, social and institutional positioning, and intention. This article examines what urban anthropologist Wacqaunt calls ‘carnal sociology’ and considers its implications for ethnographers of religious educational spaces. Contemporary ethnographers of education have renewed their interest in religious educational spaces—religious schools, houses of worship, public festivals. In conducting research in the field of religious education, ethnographers often cross familiar and unfamiliar boundaries, engaging in forms of participant observation and practice beyond their own religious categories: we research in religious spaces and with religious communities different from our own commitments. Drawing on interactional data from a multi-year ethnography of an urban Catholic school and parish in Philadelphia (USA), I consider how my own embodied participation in the religious rituals of the school and parish led to a reflexivity on practice, and initiated institutional and youth-driven social positioning in response.     

感同身受:教育民族志方法的情感向度

教育民族志是把人类学的民族志方法应用于教育研究领域所形成和发展的术语,是教育研究的基本方法之一。通过比较分析两位作者的田野经历和反思,主张将研究者“感同身受”式的情感体验作为理解教育民族志的重要维度。具体而言,研究者的情感体验包括三个层面:日常性、讽刺性和生成性。即便都是研究“教育”问题,都以“学校”为田野地点,研究者也常常因遇到文化氛围迥异的学校而有极为不同的情感体验。研究者的这种情感体验和反思对于探究研究对象的日常生活及其价值意义系统有着极为重要的意义。     

Telling data: From "A Tale of Inclusion"

This paper examines how ethnographers weave/separate "academic" voices from those of their participants in the field. Engaging some of the critical understandings in qualitative research regarding issues of representation and legitimization, authorship and authority, this paper questions where and with which of our ethnographic participants those understandings tend to be em/de/ployed, where and with whom are they still currently absent as ethnographers read and write their world. Exploring the problematics in, and the implications of, differently treating- invoking and textualizing- voices ethnographers conjure while in the field (There) and those they assemble from the academy (Here), this paper examines how a two-tiered system is created whereby the former are problematized, the latter are not. In spite of the poststructural, postcolonial understandings guiding much of the critical work in ethnography, such a twotiered system, this paper argues, induces Othering as well as creates a "There" which subsequently becomes epistemologically and ontologically detached from the "Here" of academe. Very much embedded in the practices it questions and critiques, this paper is not intended to provide solutions for practice but, rather, to broaden the conversation about practice. As such, it strives to promote ways of thinking critically about what critical ethnographers currently do and do not do rather than to further paralyze their inclination or ability to do.     

Sites unseen: Ethnographic research in a textual community

Recent writing on the subject of ethnography has sought to examine the field not only as a place where research is carried out, but also as a methodological construction. While this writing emphasizes the extent to which people's experiences of community and culture can no longer be necessarily understood in relation to geographically based locations, it often continues to assert the "legacy of the field" (Clifford, 1997, p. 88) and its accompanying expectations and practices. In this article, I draw on my experience of doing ethnographic research in the textual community of 'zines in order to challenge the assumption that ethnographic fieldwork is necessarily dependent on physical displacement, and face-to-face encounters with our research participants. Specific attention is paid to the epistemological and ethical issues that emerge when one chooses to carry out research in textual communities. Intentionally foregrounding the parallels between the textual community of 'zines and the virtual communities associated with the Internet, this article also raises important questions for ethnographers carrying out research in networked environments.     

Making links: on situating a new web site

Visual ethnographers increasingly use hypermedia for research, representation and teaching and learning. This article discusses these uses by reflecting on Visualising ethnography, a teaching and learning ‘gateway’ web site about the visual in the ethnographic process housing interviews, authored works, exhibitions, introductory texts and links. Here I situate the web site in relation to other visual anthropology web sites, discuss key characteristics of hypermedia for teaching and learning and representation and analyze both how authors, the web developed and I constructed our contributions, and users' responses. Finally I discuss the role and potential of such web sites for contemporary representation, teaching and learning in visual ethnography. Many new web sites are developing; how might they ‘live together’ and interrelate online? And what are the implications for the sorts of teaching and learning sites that might be developed in the future?     

What is ethnography? Can it survive? Should it?

This paper notes that, in the field of education and beyond, the term ‘ethnography’ has acquired a range of meanings, and comes in many different versions, these often reflecting sharply divergent orientations. I argue that this is a major problem that requires attention; particularly since today there are some serious threats to the practice of ethnographic work, on almost any definition. However, while we need to forge greater agreement about the meaning of the term, this is a challenging task. Indeed, if we take ‘ethnography’ to refer to a whole methodological approach little agreement will be possible. I argue that it may be feasible if we treat ethnography as one methodological strategy among others, each having varying advantages and disadvantages for the purposes of investigating particular topics. However, the fundamental disagreements among ethnographers today about ontological, epistemological, and axiological matters render even this by no means unproblematic.     

Articulating choice and deliberation in conducting research – researchers ‘working in the interpretive zone’

In recent years, there has been a significant growth in the volume of research production in education ethnography in Scandinavia due partly to a regionally financed network. The present article makes some comparisons between Scandinavian and other education research contexts in relation to aspects of general ethnographic design to try to analyse this production. It suggests some typical points of identity for Scandinavian educational ethnography, such as a distinct role for theories in fieldwork. But it also suggests that these characteristics are even apparent outside Scandinavia. Some blind-spots in ethnography are also suggested around quantitative aspects, but again, these are not unique. Scandinavian ethnographic research in education is broadly influenced by a range of different traditions in different parts of the region that have travelled with key people and from place to place, but it is also noted that there is seepage between ethnography and other traditions.     

Goals or horizons—the conundrum of progression in English: or a possible way of understanding formative assessment in English

This article examines how the principles of formative assessment might be applied to the curriculum subject of English. It takes as its starting point the problematic nature of progression in the subject and suggests that it may be better to understand progression as heading towards a horizon rather than a clearly defined goal. The article argues this by exploring the potential constraints of what might be considered goal models of progression and contrasts these with the affordances offered by those approaches that view progression as towards a horizon. In particular it suggests that, in order to understand how to progress, pupils need to acquire the guild subject knowledge of their teachers by being apprenticed into the same community of interpreters. The article situates this discussion within wider concerns about how teachers scaffold and regulate the learning process for their pupils.     

Interaction and cognitive engagement: An analysis of four asynchronous online discussions

Online discussion plays a unique role in face-to-face and distance teaching and learning. Interaction and student cognitive engagement during the online discussion are critical for constructing new understanding and knowledge. This article analyzes types of interaction that occur during online discussions, examines levels of student cognitive engagement in each discussion, and explores their effects on and implications for learning and teaching in higher education. By combining methods of social network analysis with qualitative content analysis, the article explores new methodologies for analyzing participation, interaction, and learning that take place online, and suggests areas for research in learning and teaching online.     

Lessons From a Postcritical Ethnography,Burundian Children With Refugee Status,and Their Teachers

This article represents one orientation to postcritical ethnography. Framing research with Burundian children and their teachers in a small city in Appalachia, the author shares the ways postcritical ethnography informed the process and representations of her work. After introducing postcritical ethnography and early beginnings to the research, the author reviews some of the issues children with refugee status endure in U.S. public schools. Using commitments from postcritical ethnography, the author explores the relationships between these children and their teachers, and their teachers and the county in which they teach. Addressing issues of access to resources and professional development, the author situates an account of school discipline at the intersections of refugee status, teacher education, and postcritical ethnography. Throughout, the author narrates the process as an ethnographer and the navigation of the commitments of postcritical ethnography.     

Weekday Religious Education in Connection with the Public School

In sympathizing with a program of “release time” for religious education, I am perhaps opening myself to a torrent of attack. I shall take it, because what 1 state here is my own personal opinion

May I indulge the hope, however, that the discussions which this article may arouse, concern themselves with a realistic and logical treatment of what I have to say, rather than rhetorical invectives. The world has changed profoundly in the spiritual realm during the past quarter century. The cry goes up from our pulpits and pews for a new appreciation of religion. Yet in so many places, there is no recognition of the new demands in terms of an adjustment of positions which, formerly sound and tenable, now are quite the opposite

This statement is submitted in an open‐minded manner in the hope of stimulating frank discussion on one of today's most important problems     

Who takes the cake in community and economic development? ‘Going along' with metaphor to problematize the collective impact of a place-based promise programme

ABSTRACT

Linguists understand metaphors to be shortcuts to an individual’s tacit knowledge about the world. As ethnographers and planners building a university-school partnership and seeking to understand residents’ perceptions of their urban neighbourhood, attention to use of metaphor allowed us insight into an insider’s mental model of who is in the community. In this article, we describe how, in our interview-based ethnographic needs assessment, one of our project participant’s metaphors helped us discern the lived nature of social stratification as racialised economic inequality. This insight not only informs our partnership work but subverts some important assumptions about programme impact. Our experience suggests metaphor analysis contributes an important tool for ethnographic interpretation.     

The Value of Inclusion

In recent years inclusion has become one of the most dominant values and objectives in education. However, there is still considerable disagreement concerning the theoretical concept of inclusion and its normative implications. This article suggests an understanding of inclusion that first differentiates analytically between societal and communal forms of inclusion, and second, situates the value of inclusion in the debate around recognition and freedom. Furthermore, it connects the discussion to some dilemmas and difficulties we might face in education. The overall approach and goal of the article is to contribute to the on‐going debate on the nature and value of inclusion and inclusive education.