Language Arts - Students and Teachers as Ethnographers, May 2004

As MaryEileen and students in her fifth-grade social studies class began writing ethnographic fieldnotes, they explored what researchers do. In the process, they learned how to speak from evidence and to observe from multiple perspectives. Using ethnographic methods, they created a log of fieldnotes that were written up each day by different students and called it The Ethnography Book. They developed more awareness as they noticed and reflected back on their experiences and recorded their community life as fifth-graders. The events of their academic lives took on more meaning as they stood back and reflected on what they did at school, who they did it with, what was said, what actions they took, and why they acted as they did. Involving these students as co-researchers in this inquiry meant that they assumed the identity of ethnographers by engaging in the social practices of observing, writing fieldnotes, asking questions, recording events, and discussing their findings with others.

Two teachers describe how they use documentation to understand the learning that takes place in their classrooms. Sutter and Donovan pair their fourth-grade and first-grade students in yearlong partnerships to explore issues of social justice through a study of the Civil Rights Movement. Students and teachers together have developed a culture of ethnography and have used tools such as tape recorders, video tapes, and cameras to document and reflect on their individual and group learning.

The discipline of folklore offers rich content and skill-building methodologies that engage students as ethnographers of authentic cultural “texts,” folklore genres found in everyday life. By identifying and interpreting their own and others” folklore, from naming traditions to occupational lore, students become aware of themselves and their families as “indigenous teachers” and as active participants in cultural processes. The history of folklore and community-based fieldwork in education reaches back to the Progressive era, when educators such as Lucy Sprague Mitchell at the newly founded Bank Street College put John Dewey's theories to work, seeking to connect teaching and learning to students' experiences and daily lives. Today, folklorists and teachers collaborate in student-centered ethnographic projects at all grade levels and subjects. This article provides an overview of folklore and how the discipline intersects with education in the classroom through the eyes of a teacher.

Ethnography is process and product, and elementary students can engage in both dimensions. This article discusses three examples of student ethnography. In a group poem about sledding by Milwaukee kindergarteners, students’ individual voices expressing diverse experiences of this shared activity illustrate that there is no single “correct” way to perform this, or any, tradition. Culture is recreated daily through variations between individuals. The best ethnographic writing represents this dynamic quality. Choices made in tape-recorded interview transcriptions by sixth graders in Door County, Wisconsin demonstrate ethical issues of how to represent subjects accurately yet respectfully. A year-long cultural study of Dane County by 4th/5th grade students in Madison, Wisconsin honed these students’ ethnographic skills. Teacher Mark Wagler tied language arts to other content areas through a common methodology of inquiry and local study.

The author weaves together her experiences as a teacher of both student researchers and teacher researchers in order to reflect on how she initiates novice researchers into the process of data analysis.

This article describes experiences in the life of an eight-year-old girl learning a new language in a decodable text/phonics-first environment. The child’s struggles to make sense of senseless text illuminate reasons why children may struggle with, dislike, and learn to define reading as merely word-calling when instructional experiences focus on passionless texts and skills in isolation. Through the eyes of a second language learner, fallacies of such approaches become visible in ways that speak to teachers of all children. Her stories demonstrate ways that reading, for a previously voracious lover of books, became difficult, frustrating, and demeaning. Implications describe how text choice and focus of instruction can have the power to ignite or destroy children’s desire, perseverance, and ability as readers.