Rich Points as Anchors: Locating Multiple Levels of Contexts in Ethnographic Archives

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

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
This presentation introduces the logic of inquiry guiding processes leading to the design, analysis and warranting of the impact of policy-practice relationships on opportunities for learning afforded linguistically diverse students in shifting policy contexts (Author, 2011). The presentation demonstrates how a 10-year ethnographic archive in one teacher’s bilingual fifth and sixth grade classrooms formed a basis for exploring multiple levels of policy-practice relationships.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework.
The Interactional Ethnographic logic of inquiry guiding construction of the data set is grounded in perspectives on the discursive construction of everyday life in classrooms (Author, 2012) and in discourse theories (Fairclough, 1989; Gumperz, 1986; Ivanič, 1994). From these perspectives, classrooms are conceptualized as cultures-in-the-making , and policies as discursive constructions. Policy-practice research perspectives guiding this logic-of-inquiry are grounded in national (Barr & Dreeben, 1983; McNeil & Coppola, 2006) and international (Alexander, 2001; Anderson-Levitt, 2002; Stevick & Levinson, 2007) studies that make visible the impact of multiple actors, layers of analytic scale and policy contexts on local work of teachers. To construct warranted accounts of policy-practice relationships this approach frames the need to explore ever-increasing policy contexts in educational systems in which local actors are embedded.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Agar’s (2006) argument that rich points are places where culture happens framed the selection and construction of the data set for contrastive analyses of shifting policy-practice relationships over 10 years. Discourse analysis of classroom and historical/policy texts was undertaken to identify roots and routes of policy actions and their impact on what the teacher was able to do with students in a common tasks across 5 years, 3 pre- and 2 post- “English Only” policy.


Data sources
Data sources selected from the ethnographic archive include: Video records (3-months-15 hours per year of Island History Project), student writing, policy documents from government websites, ethnographic records of school board elections, and district policy changes.

Results and warrants for arguments
Evidence reported includes: Analysis of supports and constraints created by shifting policy actions, and converging policies related to narrowing of opportunities for learning available for students in changing educational contexts. Policy changes identified were: Choice of language for speaking, writing, and reading, leading to narrowing of students’ performance(s) visible in reduced length and content referenced on a common end-of-the-year task following shift to English Only.

Scientific/scholarly significance
This study contributes to work examining what counts as context, from micro moments of classroom interaction to macro levels of policy contexts, and demonstrates how decisions at one point in an educational system become resources for, or constraints on, actors in local contexts. The study further demonstrates how situating policy studies in longitudinal ethnographic archived records makes visible why multiple kinds of records are necessary to constructing warranted accounts of what is possible to do, learn, and know within and across years in classrooms.

Author

• Judith L. Green, University of California - Santa Barbara