Educational Ethnography Research Articles

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.

Disassembling the classroom – an ethnographic approach to the materiality of education

The ethnography of education is challenged by the materiality of the classroom. Ethnographic accounts of school lessons mostly highlight language and interaction and offer no suitable methodology for researching objects and their role in the classroom. Moreover, objects are part of complex and interwoven assemblages involving human actors, practices and things. As such, their contribution to human practices often remains unnoticed in the background of routine activities. In order to make the materiality of practice available to ethnographic observation, we thus have to analytically disassemble these assemblages. An ethnographic approach that draws on practice theory and concepts developed in science and technology studies is proposed. Three analytic strategies dealing with the materiality of education are introduced and discussed on the basis of examples from an ethnographic research project on the role of knowledge objects in mathematics and physics classes in German secondary schools.

Broom Closet or Fish Bowl? An Ethnographic Exploration of a University Queer Center and Oneself

The authors detail an educational ethnography of a university queer cultural center’s role on campus and in the surrounding community. The data include participant observation, in-depth interviews, and artifacts. The authors review lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, ally, and questioning (LGBTAQ) issues in higher education, heterosexual attitudes, and queer theory. The findings of barriers to the Center’s mission plus the suicide of a Center student prompted the authors to explore research poetry as a means to express the inexpressible. Furthermore, they illustrate tensions between contemporary queer and gay theories through the telling of a straight tale (traditional research report) and a gay tale (experiential research report), interrupted with queer tales (poetic interludes) and queer asides. At the heart of the tale is the transformation of the first author, a gay male, to a researcher and scholar of gay issues. This tale is therefore at all times queer, gay, and straight.

Ethnographies de Lucha (of Struggle) in Latino Education: Toward Social Movement

In this article, I describe the fight back imperatives of Latino educational ethnography at a time when Latino children's education continues to be the battleground for nation and culture wars. I briefly trace the expansion of the field of Latino educational ethnography during the last two decades, and point to the possibilities for the future of Latino ethnographies de lucha as social movement. [Latino education, ethnography, agency, social movement]

To and through the UK: Holocaust refugee ethnographies of escape, education, internment and careers in development

This paper addresses one facet of a study exploring the extent to which escapees from, and survivors of, Nazism were influenced in their career choice by their early-life traumas. The particular focus is on those who subsequently became influential figures in the emergent field of development studies. Many intellectual and activist refugees from Nazism arriving in the United Kingdom received assistance from the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL). Use of the Society's still-underutilised archive, in combination with ethnographic research and analysis of their writings and other secondary sources, throws new light on this traumatic period and its influence on the escapees' later lives. The paper also identifies the constrained advocacy role of the SPSL and contributes to ‘memory work’ about this period. A key conclusion relates to the serendipity and the complex interplay of structure and agency even under the most extreme conditions.

PROTOCOL: Systematic Review Protocol: Later School Start Times for Supporting the Education, Health and Well‐being of High School Students

PROTOCOL: Systematic Review Protocol: Later School Start Times for Supporting the Education, Health and Well‐being of High School Students

The Themes and Objects of American Educational Anthropology and its Enlightenment for Chinese Educational Anthropology Studies: Based on the Analysis of Anthropology and Education Quarterly

Abstract Taking the articles published during 2000 to 2009 in Anthropology and Education Quarterly as object to analyze these articles’ research themes and objects. We found that in terms of research themes, Anthropology and Education Quarterly attaches important to the Monolingual bilingual education, issues of identification, social exclusion and cultural conflict as well as conflict between modernity and tradition. As for research object, Anthropology and Education Quarterly pays great attention to the cultural differentce and the mainstream culture research. It also pays attention to the educational status of the other countries, highlights the international perspective of Educational Anthropology. Therefore China's Educational Anthropology should expand research field, pay attention to the domestic mainstream culture research, expand study area, make the educational ethnography overseas, meanwhile should strengthen the self-construction of Educational Anthropology, and deepen the basic theoretic study.

New Love, Long Love: Keeping Social Justice and Ethnography of Education in Mind

Heath takes readers back to Hymes's years as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She recalls, in particular, his relentless passion for introducing public school administrators to ethnography's potential for seeing what could be done to increase equity and social justice within public education. She contrasts this “new love” that Hymes developed at the School of Education with his “long love” of North American Indian ethnopoetics. She suggests where and how these two kinds of love might work in today's sociopolitical world so often holistically described by encompassing terms such as global, post-racial, post-literate, and technologically dedicated.[Dell Hymes, school-based ethnography, social justice, ethnography of education]

Dell H. Hymes: His Scholarship and Legacy in Anthropology and Education

Dell Hathaway Hymes, linguistic anthropologist and educational visionary extraordinaire, passed away in November 2009, leaving behind a voluminous scholarship and inspirational legacy in the study of language and inequality, ethnography, sociolinguistics, Native American ethnopoetics, and education. This essay provides a brief account of Hymes's life and scholarly contributions, especially his early and enduring influence in the anthropology of education; and goes on to comment briefly on this AEQ set of essays honoring Hymes.[Dell Hymes, anthropology of education, ethnography, social justice, ethnography in education, educational linguistics, ethnography and social justice, communicative competence, verbal repertoire, ethnographic monitoring, ethnography of communication, ethnopoetics]

International learning communities for global and local citizenship

In this paper, I describe our ongoing international project in engaged educational ethnography and participatory action research with young adults and consider its relevance for a discussion on the community-building role of adult education in a globalized context. I use the example of our case study to suggest that adult educators can generate viable communities by creating learning spaces that nurture critical consciousness, a sense of agency, participation and social solidarity among internationally and culturally diverse young adult learners. Furthermore, I argue that participation in international learning communities formed through this educational process can potentially help young adults become locally and globally engaged citizens. International learning communities for global citizenship thus present a proposition for conceptualizing the vital role of adult community education in supporting democratic global and local citizenship in a world defined in terms of cross-cultural and longdistance encounters in the formation of culture.

I Just Like Guys (Girls)

As part of an educational ethnography of a queer cultural center at a western United States university, I explored the center’s cultural importance on the college campus and in its surrounding community. During the course of this study, I used semistructured interviews to inquire about the coming out experiences of four of my participants. Research poetry was used to capture the emotional and poignant words of my gay and lesbian participants.

ARQUITETURA ESCOLAR E O ENSINO DE EDUCAÇÃO FÍSICA: RELAÇÕES (IM)POSSÍVEIS

This study aimed to understand how the physical spaces of the school are appropriate for teachers of Physical Education (EF) classes 5th to 8th grades of elementary school. The survey was conducted in a school in the State Schools of Porto Alegre/RS, 4 teachers of PE. This is an educational ethnography and the main instruments used were participant observation, field diary, interview and document analysis. We realize that teachers of PE associate many of the limitations of their work to teaching (in)existence of spaces and materials for this field. Furthermore, we observed significant relationships between: the organizations and the appropriation of local and/or equipment for teachers with pedagogical practice in EF.

‘Love your China’ and evangelise: religion, nationalism, racism and immigrant settlement in Canada

This paper explores how race, religion and national origin intersect in one transnational context. In an educational ethnography, I encountered a discourse that called for overseas Chinese to convert and evangelise other Chinese (in China), which won many followers in Canada. Using Critical Race Theory and the notion of intersectionality, I analyse the shared understandings of race and national identity, and the shared experience of institutionalised discrimination in everyday life in this community. I suggest that sanctioned and enabled by Canadian banal nationalism and racism, structural discrimination against racialised minority immigrants contributes to difficulties they experience in settlement. Intersecting with racism and banal nationalism, Christian evangelism offers many Chinese immigrants an alternative frame to understand the meaning and purpose of immigration and of living as racialised immigrants. Implications for immigrant settlement and for education in general are discussed.

Ethnographic investigations of issues of race in Scandinavian education research

In this article we aim to present an overview of some of the ways in which issues of race and ethnicity are represented and researched in educational ethnography in Scandinavia. Several things are suggested. Amongst them is that educational ethnographers in Scandinavia rarely use the concept of race. The term (im)migrant(s) is used instead and the relationships in education between Scandinavians and (im)migrants and between educational results and (im)migrant culture and/or languages are often in focus. Integration has also been an issue. History may give an indication as to how this may have become so. Research on immigrants, immigration and integration has been promoted in national policies and these policies highlight language, culture and diversity but for historical and political reasons they often avoid ethnicity and ignore race and colour altogether. Moreover, when ethnicity is used it seems to be used more as an ontological marker than as an epistemological concept. This has repercussions we suggest for understanding the politics of race and ethnicity relations in relation to education.

On Structure and Agency in Ethnographies of Education: Examples from This Special Issue and More Generally

The articles in this collection are about the development, possibility, exercise and possible frustration of human agency within educational exchanges. They are also all based on ethnography, which is now a common approach to educational research. Ethnography is not a seamless, neutral observational practice but is instead variable in relation to theoretical perspectives and methodological application. However, central to all approaches is an emphasis on an active and creative citizen and an assumption that there is a dialectical relationship between human social practices, human consciousness and social structures. The similarities and differences within education ethnography are apparent even in the articles present here and in the ways in which they depict, define and describe agency in this special issue.

The relationship between ethical positions and methodological approaches: a Scandinavian perspective

In this article, based on reading ethnographic theses, books and articles and conversations with nine key informants, we have tried to describe how research ethics are approached and written about in educational ethnography in Scandinavia. The article confirms findings from previous research that there are different methodological forms of ethnography there. It adds that although ethical descriptions can of course be described by using formal-philosophical ethical-typographies there is also a relationship between ethical holdings and methodological approaches. The different approaches reflect critical, feminist, interactionist and micro-ethnographic forms. The ethical types have been termed utilitarian, deontological, relational and ecological. The main conclusions are that the research we have analysed has always considered ethical issues and that these considerations often in some sense reflect national ethical guidelines from research authorities and financiers. A drift can also be discerned away from utilitarian ethics to relational and ecological thinking in accordance with methodological and ideological commitments and beliefs.

Multi-sited ethnography and the field of educational research

This paper responds to the challenge of how educational research might be practised in a contemporary world that is no longer necessarily organised by nearness and unity. Focusing on ethnography, it argues for what a multi-sited imaginary contributes to research in the field of education. By giving prominence to the notion of multi-sited ethnography as it has been developed by the anthropologist George Marcus this paper shows how ethnography conceived this way is now necessary in educational research. By bringing together recent concepts from anthropology with educational ethnography, it provides an analysis and reconstruction of how to go about doing ethnography in a world that is characterised by partial connections. To highlight the contributions to education of this research imaginary the paper provides an example of how to approach a specific research topic in this field. In sum, this paper makes a unique contribution to educational research by providing an ethnographic approach for the study of contemporary educational lives.

Identifying and comparing Scandinavian ethnography: comparisons and influences

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.

The concept smacks of magic: Fighting familiarity today

Good educational ethnography whether done by sociologists or anthropologists, makes the familiar strange. The history of that proposition is outlined, and five strategies available to all ethnographers focused on teaching and learning, whether sociologists or anthropologists of education or not, are outlined. The vital importance of the working hypothesis is emphasised. Key concepts from Lave and Wenger are criticised and compared to the long history of calls to make the familiar strange.

The Somali Bantu Experience: Using Multimedia Ethnography for Community Building, Public Education and Advocacy

The Somali Bantu Experience: Using Multimedia Ethnography for Community Building, Public Education and Advocacy