Ethnography

DEFINITIONS

• Etymology: ‘ethno’ (human culture) and ‘graphy’ (description of)

• Ethnography is the study of people in naturally occurring settings
or 'fields' which aims to understand another way of life from the
native point of view

• Ethnography is a qualitative research procedures for
describing, analyzing, and interpreting a culture-sharing group’s
shared patterns of behavior, beliefs, and language that develop
over time

• Sometimes called as interpretive qualitative studies, ethnographies
are investigations of particular communities, such as a hospital or
a classroom, conducted to obtain an emic perspective and a
holistic view of the community being studied.
Ethnography for elt: parlin pardede (2012)

An ethnography is conducted when
the researcher …
• has a culture-sharing group to study
• wants a day-to-day picture
• has long-term access to culture-sharing group
• thinks a study of a group helps the researcher
understand a larger issue


Traditional ethnography was carried out by anthropologists among non–
modern people in small scale and relatively isolated societies.

Ethnographic approaches were later developed and applied to modern
societies and focussed on city areas, towns or villages.

They have also been developed to look at aspects of identity such as
ethnicity or social position, in the workplace, educational and social
settings, such as societies, clubs and classrooms.

In a classroom ethnography is conducted by assuming that cultures are
being constructed by the students and teachers’ interactions on a daily
basis. Some of these cultures are ―invisible‖ because they become
ordinary and routine. Ethnography can be used to make them visible and
allow a look at what students and teachers are doing and learning in
classrooms.
ethnography for elt: parlin pardede (2012)

Five Features of Ethnographies
Hammersley (1990)

• People’s behavior is studied in everyday
contexts, rather than under experimental conditions
created by the researcher.
• Data are gathered from a range of sources, but
observations and informal conversations are usually
the main ones.
• The approach to data collection is “unstructured” (it
does not involve following through a detailed plan set
up at the beginning).
• The focus is usually a single setting or group of
relatively small scale.
• The analysis of the data involves interpretation of the
meanings and functions of human actions and mainly
takes the form of verbal descriptions and explanations.

Some Contemporary Topics of Ethnography in ELT

• Teacher perspectives on lesson plan adjustment
• Student perspectives on lecture comprehension
• Cross-cultural expectations on parent involvement in school
• Experiences of learners in English as a Second Language
(ESL)
• The relationship of gender and language learning
• The effects of computer on Foreign Language classroom
• Classroom interactions
• Oral presentations in graduate seminars
• The role of race and gender in study-abroad program
experiences

Data Collection & Analysis

Observations

Data Analysis:
Field Notes
Data
Descriptive
Collection
Interviews

Recordings /
Other Artifacts

ethnography for elt: parlin pardede (2012)

Data Analysis Approaches
1. Chronology—Researchers can organize their notes
over time to basically tell a story of what they observed.
2. Key events—Researchers can organize the data by key
events they observe and perhaps organize these
events by their significance.
3. Various settings—Data can be organized according to
where they occur.
4. People—If individuals or groups are the primary unit of
analysis, then the data could be organized by cases.
5. Issues—Data can also be organized by key issues that
the researcher has identified.

Ethnography and Case Study Compared

Case study research Ethnographic research
• Time commitment : less • Time commitment:
time required in the field significant length of time
(weeks/few months at required in the field
most) (months/years)
• Orientation of researcher: • Orientation of researcher:
studies people learns from people
• Type of data collected:
• Type of data collected: interviews, documents, ar
mostly interviews and tefacts, notes from
documents fieldwork and participant
observation


Basic Procedure for an Ethnographic Project

1. Choose a target group (e.g. English Education program students)
2. Find informant(s) able to represent this group
3. Limit the shared patterns (of behavior/beliefs/habits) you’d like to study
4. Do library/web research on the shared patterns and, if possible, the
group.
5. Collect the data through observations, field notes, interviews, and
recordings/artifacts and organize them into the categories of
setting, systems, people, and behavior.
6. Analyze the data and form a cultural hypothesis (e.g. about what
strategies they use to enrich English vocabulary, what types and how
many pages of texts they used to read, what they think about English
pronunciation, why they decided taking English their major, etc)
7. Reflect upon your own cultural frames of reference; and seek to
understand the limitations of the evidence used to make the hypothesis
formed
8. Report you findings.


Proposal Outline
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
A. Background to the Study
B. Reason for Choosing the Topic
C. Statement of the Problem
D. The site and/or unit of analysis General profiles
E. Objectives of the Study
F. Research Questions
G. Significance of the Study
H. Scope of the Study
I. Definition of Terms


Proposal Outline (cont.)
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
A. Previous Studies
B. Theoretical Background

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A. Research Method (i.e. ethnography)
B. Data and Data Collection Procedure
C. Research Population and Sample
D. Research Setting
E. Data Analysis Techniques
F. Data Triangulation Techniques
G. Research Procedure


REFERENCES
Burns. A. (2010). Doing action research in english language teaching: A guide
for practitioners. New York: Routledge
Crang, M. & Cook, I. (2007). Doing ethnographies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Creswell, J. W. 2008. Educational research: Planning, conducting, and
evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. New Jersey: Pearson
Fetterman, D. (2010). Ethnography: Step-by-step (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications.
Genzuk, M. (2003). A synthesis of ethnographic research. Center for
Multilingual, Multicultural Research Digital Papers Series. Center for
Multilingual, Multicultural Research, University of Southern California.
Retrieved June 21, 2007, from http://www-
rcf.usc.edu/~genzuk/Ethnographic_Research.html
Hammersley, M. (1990). Reading ethnographic research: A critical guide.
London: Longman.
Hammersley, M & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice (3rd
ed.). New York: Routledge
McKay, S. L. (2006). Researching second language classrooms. New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

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