Collaborating to Uncover Layers of Contexts in Ethnographic Archives

• In Event: The Problem of Context(s) When (Re)constructing Data Sets From Archived Records

Abstract

Objectives
This study makes visible layers of contextual knowledge and insider-outsider perspectives needed in working with an ethnographic archive.

Perspectives
An interactional ethnographic perspective guided construction of both the original archive and the focus dataset for this study. Interactional ethnography makes visible how life in classrooms and social groups is socially constructed in and through the discursive actions of people (Castanheira, Crawford, Dixon, & Green, 2000; Rex, 2006). The ethnographic principles of abductive logic, holistic and contrastive perspectives, and setting aside ethnocentrism guided the ways in which we analyzed how any particular representation of learning at a moment in time was socially and discursively constructed by class participants in the multilayered contexts of the class, the program, and social worlds which students observed for their research projects.

Methods
To anchor this interactional ethnographic study and to construct a focused dataset from a three-year archive, we used Dixon and Green’s (2005) concept of backward mapping as a way of tracing routes and the roots of disciplinary knowledge constructed in classrooms settings. To select a starting point for backward mapping we drew on Agar’s (2006) view of rich points as opportunities for learning what discursive and cultural (languacultural) knowledge and practices are embedded in people’s communication.

Data sources
The archive consists of three years of video and audio records, texts, and teacher and student materials from an introductory Advanced Research Methods and Qualitative Research courses taught by the senior author of this paper. The data set constructed to explore what and how students learned in the Qualitative class, included videos of final presentations, course syllabus and handouts from the first day of class, class powerpoints, and video of the first day.

Results
The process of constructing a dataset from an archive foregrounded issues in archiving, accessing, and analyzing records, which led to the need to explore what could (could not) be studied. Issues identified include: 1) How gaps in organizing and storing archived materials created challenges related to entering the archive to construct a dataset to address new questions; 2) how access involved gaining permission both to the archive and to the insider knowledge needed to contextualize what, when, in what ways, and for what purposes a “bit of life” (Hymes, 1977) was recorded on video and included (or not) in the archive; and 3) how collaborating with a new researcher made visible the importance of context, layers of insider-outsider perspectives, and discursive patterns of life in social groups, needed to construct understandings of what is learned in classrooms and in what ways.

Significance
This study demonstrated that constructing and accessing ethnographic data sets involved drawing not only on layers of discursive contexts inscribed on the archived records but also on the knowledge of people who constructed the original archive. Collaborating with new scholars deepens understandings of insider/outside knowledge and how such knowledge provides opportunities for all researchers to gain deeper understandings of questions driving the original study, and the need for multilayered studies of social contexts of life in classrooms.

Authors

• Park Blakeley Pearson, University of the Incarnate Word

• Audra Skukauskaite, University of the Incarnate Word