Contemporary Educational Ethnography

Catalog description

Recommended Preparations: Qualitative Research course or permission of instructor. This seminar shows students how to use contemporary ethnographic theories and methods for education research to inform educational practice and policy. The contemporary movement might arguably be situated in the controversies of the 1980s and 90s, exemplified in Clifford and Marcus's book, Writing Culture, in which they identified the epistemological and political predicaments and controversies pertaining to "the crisis of representation" in the field of anthropology. CI 512 addresses methodological and theoretical approaches informed though literary, reflexive, postmodern, poststructural, feminist, multisensory, multimodal, multivocal, and postcolonial turns and the ways in which they inform educational ethnography. The course focuses on a comprehensive view of education-schools, cultural and community centers, home life- as sites for all ages to learn to become members of their culture(s). A significant and regularly occurring aspect of the class involves students engaging in contemporary ethnographic practices such as cartographic, photographic/videographic, arts-based, alternative writing, walking/movement, sensory, performative, and multimodal. The course will intersperse readings of ethnography with readings about ethnography, largely within the contemporary sphere. The focus will be on contemporary movements that are likely to affect students as they consider ethnographic approaches for their dissertation topics (e.g, science education, musical training, literacy practice, critical race pedagogy).