Ways of Knowing and Doing Ethnographically: Course Re/Design

• In Event: Teaching Ethnography Remotely: Centering the Social

Abstract

Purposes 


Ethnography is centered in our doctoral program. Building understanding of the cultural complexities of language and literacy, learning and teaching, this course blends ways of knowing and researching(doing) with the aim to create spaces for students to explore, take risks with, and trouble ethnographic research. This past fall and spring semesters, we had to rethink its face-to-face design and teach it online as we responded to the two pandemics. In this part, I will address the question: How can the course design ethnographically shape the experience of doing ethnographic research? To do so I briefly present this course’s institutional history and its design. Then I answer how we re-designed the course for teaching, learning, and researching in digital environments. I draw on artifacts produced in the planning and trouble the notion of “immersion in fieldwork.”


Modes of Inquiry & Data Sources

Adopting critical collaborative inquiry (Author 1, 2004; Wooldridge, 2001), we treat teaching as social texts produced, in this case, through critical engagement with course design; and, what these curricular choices and practices convey about centering the social and teaching ethnography online. We explore these questions through a grounded approach through open and focused analysis (Emerson et al., 2011). These practices support our discursive analytical work as we examine the discourses invoked in this course context (Charmaz, 2020). As a final move, we select data to illustrate the insights gained.


Substantiated Conclusions

Reflecting on the course’s ethnographic design and artifacts, I use these to show how instructors and participants reconsider “the field,” participation observation, and other data collection practices. I trouble the construct of “immersion,” that is, while digital tools can create immersion, writing is still central to ethnographic work and anchors fieldwork. I show how remote and face-to-face participation offer challenges(opportunities) for data collecting practices, how the pandemics both reveal and amplify power relations. In many ways, the course instructors “are the ones being taught” (Ulmer, Kuby, & Christ, 2020, p. 5).

Scholarly Significance

Teaching the ethnography course during these pandemics offers new challenges(possibilities), especially flexibility, resourcefulness, and a commitment to social justice. We expand our understanding of “the field.” Immersion is troubled: While digital tools can create immersion, writing is still central to our work. This thinking tool anchors our fieldwork. Remote and face-to-face participation offers challenges(opportunities) for collecting and representational practices. Ethical and political issues are amplified because vulnerable communities are vulnerable in online spaces. Our students engaged with questions such as: What is possible within these circumstances? What does the virus reveal? What is overlooked with digital research? We came to understand that these times are opportune to learn from how teachers, students, and their families negotiate learning and teaching and how K-12 students to endure(engage) with these difficult times. Assemblages of varied data sources from the past and present situated this moment. Ethnography is essential work.

Author

• Maria José Botelho, University of Massachusetts Amherst