Using VCE to Address Difficult Subjects With Teachers

• In Event: Reimagining Early Childhood Education Research Using Video-Cued Ethnography

Abstract

For critical ethnographers, a researcher’s position in dynamic power relations is imperative when conducting research, as they are part of such relations. Continual examination of their own biases, power, privilege, and biases is crucial (Madison, 2011). The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate how the video-cue ethnography (VCE) method (Adair & Kurban, 2019a; Tobin, 2019) can help researchers deeply reflect on their power and privilege as scholars through listening to people’s multiple voices. Along with participant observation, this method helps researchers to respond to participants, in this study, teachers’ perspectives that are not seen to researchers.

The scene used to provoke the discussion among teachers is a video filmed in 2017 as part of the author’s research project, Blinded study, entitled “Marching to the Flag.” In the scene, one child waves an American flag while a group of children are giggling and listening to a song. The teacher says, “We don’t have to march, but we all stand.” Soon, the children are walking and moving their feet to the song. “Yes, that’s marching! March, march, march”, says a teacher. The children chant “USA” along to the chorus of the teacher’s song. It is a pivotal scene from a Head Start classroom that serves – according to one of the teacher’s descriptions – a rural, predominantly white, “working-class” community.

This scene is often described as “white-centric” by many white scholars, who study about whiteness, which was manifested through the recent political events related to the President election and Black Lives Matter (BLM), and I somewhat agree with this description. Using this scene as a cue for semi-structured interview, the teachers likewise mentioned BLM and the political events that had recently swept their community but they had differing interpretations of the scene. I discovered two opposite interpretations: some thought it was too patriarchal and thus problematic due to potential conflicts with parents of children (who are not Republicans), while others thought it was educational, helping children collectively learn American values (e.g., respect). Voloshinov (1973), with the notion of evaluative accents, may suggest that teachers’ contradictive discussion about the scene illustrates rural issues (e.g. prison construction, rural poverty, etc.), as the confusion, contradictions, and stress they shared actually reflect “larger social tensions, problems, and inconsistencies” (Tobin, 2000, p.21; Henward et al., 2021).

In this presentation, I highlight the teachers’ responses to my scholarly perspective on the scene as well as their own reflections and complicated feelings while the teachers and I were watching and discussing it. This finding that teachers draw rural issues in their interpretations suggests that the VCE enabled me to interrogate my hidden biases and uncritical acceptance of portrayal of ‘rural people’. This way of doing interviews and making sense of participants’ talk offers a researcher to deeply unearth participants’ talk within their own context.

Author

• Sungryung Lyu, The Pennsylvania State University