Tina Bell

5870

Dr. DeVries

Commentary week 5

17 March 2009

Layers of Knowledge

It seems hard to believe that ethnography was a term I was unfamiliar with at the onset of this semester even though I consider myself a teacher researcher. I have spent many years testing out instructional methods in the classroom, collecting data on these methods, and presenting my findings to others. I have collaborated with teachers to find holes in my research, modification of my research, and for replication of my research. I will even be in a classroom again at the end of this week collecting data to determine the effectiveness of a proposed practices. Another teacher and I wish to determine which (if any) of our proposed methods will be effective with certain students in a particular classroom, and to do so, we must engage in the practice of ethnography. Needless to say that I am finding it helpful that each subsequent course reading provides a new layer onto the topic of ethnography. And although I often find myself cheering in agreement, I find the depth of this task to be daunting as well.

The first few weeks presented articles which left me cheering. “The Most Photographed Barn in America” illuminated the concern regarding perception. Purcell-Gates’ “Ethnographic Research” seemed to be an introduction as-well-as a justification of the subject. Ruth Ray in “Composition from the Teacher Researcher Point of View,” pronounced that teachers are qualified researchers and Carolyn Frank discussed in her article “An ethnographic Perspective” what teachers might discover as they engage in this type of research. Each of these articles left me with a feeling of affirmation.

However, it is the readings of the past two weeks which give me pause. The two articles have raised my level of discomfort. Last week, I wrote about the struggles Brenda Bridgman describes in her article “Still-Life: Representations and Silences in the Participant-Observer Role” as she tries to re-represent her informants she can not help but collect and interpret data from her own point of view. And, Bridgman wonders if her recreations are in fact valid. I wonder if some of the same issues which kept Bridgman from writing will also hinder me. I understand that the separation between participant and observer may blur. I understand that I have biases and preconceptions which I must announce at the onset of my writing. But what I do not understand is how I can control for the biases and perceptions I do not even realize I have. The only solution I can offer at this point is the importance of collaboration. Engaging in such a process may highlight some of my unique ways of thinking and offer an opportunity for me to analyze them.

And definitely making me squirm is this week’s article “Culture on the Page: Experience, Rhetoric, and Aesthetics in Ethnographic Writing” by Bonnie Sunstein. This article turned a bright spotlight on a bias I didn’t even realize I had. I feel as though I am standing naked in a crowd. I am always ranting and raving about academic writing being so dull. I get angry when I must approach an article that puts me to sleep or uses such complex syntax that an exhausted teacher returning home at the end of a long day, cannot stand to work out. I am the first to attack the author’ choice of style given who I believe his audience to be. But when Sunstein writes about the false “assumption that if an ethnographic account is engaging, it cannot be scientific” (192), I had an extremely uncomfortable vision. I saw myself approximately two minutes ago, reading a narrative portion of Sunstein’s work with her teacher writing group. I could hear my inner voice whispering, “This is interesting to read. I can’t possibly be research.” It leaves me with the question, can one really weave the story and the information together? I hope so. I enjoyed reading this piece, can because I did, I will remember it in more detail than the others. I guess I really want to believe that “metaphor and imagery allow for reader interpretation, and that reader interpretation is a goal rather than a hindrance.