World-oriented fieldwork in education. The case of writing (about) computers

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how the practice of fieldwork can enable researchers to attend to the educational environment of the school in a world-oriented way, rather than taking an explanatory or demystifying approach that spirals away from what happens in the world. Finding new ways and new vocabularies to approach educational realities gains a special urgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country whose social fabric is often analyzed in terms of a lack: the Congolese state is considered weak or fragile and its education sector is seen as being in a deep learning crisis. Recent studies have successfully used fieldwork methods to explain the remarkable persistence of the DRC’s public education sector by ethnographically accounting for the ways it is governed on a political or bureaucratic level. We propose that fieldwork, understood as a world-oriented research practice, which instills in researchers a curiosity for the world, can also enable researchers to attend to those classroom gestures that safeguard the existence and persistence of Congolese schools on a pedagogical level.