Writing (Righting) Ethnographic Exits: Methodological Insights on Leaving the Field from Elementary Literacy Researchers

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Four research teams detail the possibilities of reconsidering child-produced texts that result from ethnographic researchers’ exit from fieldwork. Taking a retrospective look at data generated in early and elementary field sites across North America over the last decade, the authors prompt new conversations about what might be gained from repositioning children’s “goodbye” texts as relevant social processes, particularly for understanding child-researcher relationships. Individually, teams share curated collections of child-produced compositions to illustrate the potential of examining exit artifacts. Together, they showcase how such examinations might cultivate alternative spaces for researcher reflexivity, particularly with respect to how language and social processes researchers might ethically exit the field.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Language and Social Processes

Chair

• Clara Abbott, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Made Not Only in Words: Reading Child-Researcher Relations through Exit Artifacts and “Are You Leaving?” Letters - Jon M. Wargo, University of Michigan; Cassie J. Brownell, University of Toronto

• Exit Strategies and Long Goodbyes: Navigating Relational Entanglements When Leaving Classroom Communities - Haeny S. Yoon, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Drawing Goodbyes: Young Children’s Multimodal Meaning-Making and Relational Connections in Ethnographic Research - Carmen Lugo Llerena, Teachers College, Columbia University

• “Goodbye / Goodnight”: Making Sense of Ethnographic Exits Through Classroom Rituals - Beth A. Buchholz, Appalachian State University

Session Organizer

• Cassie J. Brownell, University of Toronto

Discussant

• Deborah Rowe, Vanderbilt University