网络民族志:“互联网+”时代教育研究的新路径

在“互联网+教育”时代,教育信息化的发展和普及不仅带来了教育方式的变革,更重构了教育空间、教育情境和教育关系,形成了独特的网络教育文化。网络民族志以网络环境作为主要的研究背景和环境,利用网络媒体平台和互动工具来收集数据资料,以探究和阐释互联网及相关社会文化现象。作为伴随网络文化现象而产生的研究方法,网络民族志对于探究互联网环境下的教育文化具有一定的借鉴作用,通过浸润体验、对话互动、情境追踪和多维分析等具体方法,实现对网络教育现象的整体性认知、共情化理解和过程性透视。文章指出了网络民族志在教育研究中可能面临的问题,为“互联网+”时代教育研究提供了新的路径参考。     

In-the-works of understanding workaholism

Ethnographic research probes both contextually situated and personally resonate values in ways that may provoke ethical tensions for researchers. Reflecting on my fieldwork, I demonstrate how my engagement with recovering workaholics disturbed the ontological security underlying my long-held understandings of “work ethic” and success. Subsequently, I encourage applied communication scholars to embrace the uncertainties they discover through their work—not as sites for resolution, but rather as sources for ongoing, heuristic inquiry.     

The only way is ethics: methodological considerations for a working-class academic

ABSTRACT

Ethnography as a methodological approach presents the fieldworker with many ethical crossroads throughout the research process. This is because of the unique position that ethnographers find themselves in, the environments that they research and the relationships which are formed. This paper presents four confessional vignettes from a broader ethnographic research project that illuminate the underside of fieldwork, and how the author dealt with a number of difficulties and dilemmas in the field as a working-class academic. Fieldwork was undertaken in a Welsh (UK) secondary school for one full academic year, and the paper argues that researcher identity must be remain fluid so that successful field relations are established and maintained. The paper concludes that researchers must think intersectionally about their endeavours and to also consider how one’s own social baggage might impact upon the research process.     

Toward a communication theory of group dialectics: an ethnographic study of a community theater group

A dialectical perspective recognizes that there are tensions between oppositions in human interaction such as the need for independence and the need for dependence. This approach has been instrumental in exploring the dialectical tensions and coping strategies individuals use in interpersonal contexts. This ethnographic study utilized a dialectical perspective to examine group communication in a community theater group. The results revealed 11 specific dialectical tensions within the group that represent four more global issues for the group as well as a number of communication strategies that group members use to manage those tensions. These issues provide a framework for further development of a communication theory of group dialectics.     

Sonic Earthquakes

This is an ethnographic study of youths who put elaborate sound systems in their automobiles. I argue that participants in loud car stereo culture share an aesthetic agency, using sound and mobility to construct environments (discussed in this article as mobile heterotopias) that challenge the spatial and temporal constraints of daily life. Their actions and stories speak to, and exist within, broader contemporary debates in the United States about music and noise in public places. Moreover, their sonic booms confront and undermine official attempts to regulate contemporary life and to sanitize public spaces.     

Shared Leadership in a Community Theater Group: Filling the Leadership Role

In contrast to research in which an individual leader is assigned or expected to emerge, musical theater productions provide an opportunity to explore how leadership is shared among the director, assistant director, music director, choreographer, and stage manager in a naturally occurring group. This ethnographic study explores how one community theater group managed the sharing of leadership roles when the primary director assumed a passive or ineffective role. The study explores the communication and affective responses of the secondary leaders and cast members when they perceived that the primary leadership failed to function and then examines how secondary leaders and cast members communicated to share the leadership to produce successful theatrical performances. The results have implications for other groups with shared leadership structures.     

Teaching in the periphery: Teacher identity in community language schools

Community language schools are unique educational language providers developed as grassroots initiatives by immigrant communities worldwide. However, little is known about community language school teachers’ work or their sense of identity. The present study uses narrative inquiry to explore the experiences and challenges of one Swedish community language school teacher in Australia. Key findings show that community language school teachers’ sense of teacher identity is situated and negotiated in the intersection of people, power relations, and language ideologies which can lead to a lack of job satisfaction, a sense of failure, and marginalisation in wider educational contexts.     

The Gendered Interactional Patterns of Computer-Mediated Chatrooms: A Critical Ethnographic Study

This study explores the gendered discourse of social-based computer-mediated contexts. Specifically, the critical ethnography explicates the patterns of discourse of both a sports-related (masculine-dominated) chatroom and a female-based (feminine-dominated) chatroom. Through the participant observations, the researcher discovered that traditionally masculine and feminine forms of discourse dominate the chatrooms. Furthermore, the groups constructed and maintained normative forms of behavior. Masculine participants were aggressive, argumentative, and power oriented. While feminine participants sought relationships and intimacy, they were often dominated and overpowered by the aggressive discourse of the masculine members. The findings have significant implications for the construction of gender in cyberspace, the normative behavior of computer-mediated communication, and power and gender in the use of technology.     

Engaging “Others” in Civic Engagement through Ethnography of Communication

This essay explains how ethnography of communication informed a model of public participation designed to engage underserved populations in culturally sensitive deliberative discussions. Community college students successfully served as coresearchers to pilot test and assess the effectiveness of a community-service learning model of civic engagement research.