Becoming Familiar With an Unfamiliar Disciplinary Context: An Ethnographic Investigation of an Architecture Design Studio

• In Event: 56.058 - The Discursive Construction of Learning Opportunities: Developing an Interdisciplinary/Interprofessional Ethnographic Research Agenda for Postsecondary Education

Abstract

Purpose/Objective

Researchers entering new learning environments or disciplines, ones outside their own disciplines, are often required to follow the roots and routes of observed processes to gain an emic (insider) understanding of the work of local actors, artifacts, and language-in-use. Through exploration of everyday patterns of participants, ethnographers begin to uncover what actors are required to know, understand, and construct to engage socially, professionally, and academically (Heath, 1982). For this poster, I present the processes required to gain an emic understanding in a 24/7 access third year undergraduate architecture studio at public regional-university site in California.

Conceptual Framework
Guiding the present study was an interactional ethnographic perspective (Green, Dixon & Zaharlick, 2003), which framed the need to trace over time the patterns, processes, and practices of a Architecture Studio as a developing cultural group. As an outsider entering a new disciplinary study, I developed a multilayered approach to trace over time how and in what ways processes and practices were proposed, established and (re)formulated and related meanings, interactions, history/ies, and resources were jointly constructed before, during, and after the course. Discourse-in-use (Bloome & Clark, 2006) provided ways of tracing teaching and classroom (studio) interactions, including what was being proposed, recognized, acknowledged, and socially significant (Bloome & Egan Robertson, 1993) to/by actors in this particular design studio setting, the profession, the department, and the institution.

Modes of Inquiry
This methodological approach involves two interrelated angles of analysis—one at the collective level focusing on discourse(s), social actions, achievements, and outcomes of the classroom instructional processes. The other angle examined individuals within the collective, how they took up (or not) what was constructed at the collective level, and how the use of resources was transferred across subsequent events. This ethnographic study was guided by a logic-in-use that was nonlinear, recursive, and abductive (Green, Skukauskaite, and Baker, 2012).

Data Sources

These key areas were examined through analysis of written fieldnotes, video records (60 hours), ethnographic interview conversations, and learning management system records (assignments, discussion boards, course materials, syllabus, and weekly readings) collected over the course of two academic quarters.

Results
This study led to identification of principles of course design, curriculum, departmental and professional practices and processes used in preparing students for academic, social and cultural demands of the architecture profession. An unanticipated result was the inclusion of both an analog and a digitally supported lab, in which the instructor and invited faculty and professionals engaged with students across the year. It further made visible the role of public critique as a critical professional learning process for students as they engaged with clients and professional experts about their designs and models.

Significance
These findings lay a foundation for understanding phenomenon/a central to work in design studios and how this work informed ongoing conversations about the relationship between academic and professional knowledge construction. Findings from this study contribute to dialogues about how, and in what ways, instructors design courses (purpose, function, etc.) for learning disciplinary content and preparing students to enter a profession.

Authors

• Ethny A. Stewart, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Thomas Fowler, California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo