Hong Kong, Canada: Performed ethnography for anti-racist teacher education

Tara Goldstein

doi:10.1080/713698979

Abstract

For the last four years, I have been conducting critical ethnographic fieldwork in a Canadian multilingual high school, and thinking about the ways I might write up my findings. In an attempt to represent the experiences of those who participated in my study in a way that does not lead to the reproduction of the policies and practices of colonialism and racism I mean to challenge, I have experimented with the genre of playwriting. As a critical educational ethnographer who is also a teacher educator, I want my ethnographic writing to engage my teacher education students in critical analysis and practice. My experiments with ethnographic playwriting and performed ethnography endeavor to represent the research subjects in a way that not only facilitates their truths but also matters to people who were going to be asked to listen to and act upon these truths. This article describes a fictional, but ethnographically-informed play about some of the linguistic and academic dilemmas facing immigrant youth and their Canadian-born classmates. The article also provides a summary of the reasons why I believe that research-based drama holds exciting possibilities for critical teacher education.

Highlights

This is a paper about the pedagogical possibilities “performed ethnography”ii has for anti-racist teacher education
As a White, Canadian-born researcher who has undertaken an anti-racist ethnographic project concerning the education of immigrant children from Hong Kong, I know I need to negotiate the politics of writing about “Other people’s children” (Delpit 1995)
I am aware that contemporary educational ethnographers and researchers have inherited a legacy of racism and colonialism that makes our research suspect

Summary

Introduction

This is a paper about the pedagogical possibilities “performed ethnography”ii has for anti-racist teacher education. The play is about the different ways a group of students and a teacher in one fictionalized school have thought about, responded to and negotiated different linguistic dilemmas with each other. Wendy is a recent immigrant from Hong Kong in a school where more than one third of the student population speak Cantonese as their primary language.

Results

Conclusion