“We Need Both”: Combining Video‐Cued Multivocal Ethnographic Methods and Traditional Fieldwork in Samoan Head Start Policy Research

Abstract

This article describes how, in our research with Head Start teachers in American Samoa, we combined video‐cued multivocal ethnographic method (VCE) with traditional ethnographic approaches to understand our interlocutors’ perspectives on curriculum and pedagogy, and the contrast between them and mainland US teachers using the same federally endorsed curriculum. We provide illustrative examples of how the inclusion of VCE allowed for meaningful dialogue among informants and researchers, revealing Samoan teachers’ cultural sustainable approaches to curriculum. [Policy, Head Start, multivocal video‐cued ethnography, post‐colonial theory]