Multimodal Mapping: Extending Ethnography Methodology

• In Event: Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Innovations in Qualitative Research Design

Abstract

As 21st century social practices evolve, educational researchers are exploring implications for framing and coming to understand ways of being and learning. Inspired by calls to consider multimodality,I explore how theory from critical geography, anthropology, and visual methodologies opened opportunities for me to extend ethnographic methodology to multimodal mapping methodology. Ontologically, I frame social life as complex and ideologically practiced. By ideologically practiced, I mean that individuals’social practices implicate anticipated and prior understandings related to social purposes, places, materials, beliefs and social relationships. Individuals construct, channel, or marginalize social practices in ideologically-rooted, dynamic ways. I situate this discussion within sociocultural and constructivist epistemologies and explain the theoretical and field observations that informed my perspective.

Author

• Julie Frear Schappe, The Pennsylvania State University