Index: Ethnographic Study
Introduction
In the field of social science research more researchers now tend to turn to the qualitative rather than the quantitative research since they believe there are multiple truths out there in the world rather than a single truth that the positivists (quantitative researchers) believe to be. One of the kinds of qualitative research is the ethnography, or ethnographic study. With the rising of the field of anthropology, in particular cultural anthropology, ethnographic study has become more popular and widely used (see the works of Mead, Malinowski, and Spindler, to name but a few). But what is ethnography?
What is ethnography?
Etymologically the word ethnography comes from the Greek word “ethnos” which means people, and “graphein”, writing. As such, it refers to the genre of writing that presents varying degrees of qualitative and quantitative descriptions of human social phenomena, based on fieldwork. (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography). Another author, Hammersley, states that ethnography is “a form of research focusing on the sociology of meaning through close field observation of sociocultural phenomena” (http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765) Goodley (2003) describes ethnography as an approach to research that involves immersion within, and investigation of, a culture or social world.
As we have seen, then, ethnography covers two meanings as Kell (1999) puts it: it is the fundamental research method of cultural anthropology, and at the same time it is the written text produced to report ethnographic research results. How, then, shall we define ethnography in the field of educational research as the one I am doing now?
James Spradley (1979, 1980) is the key figure in ethnography and he is famous for two of his most influential works: Ethnographic Interview (1979) and Participant Observation (1980) in which he explains the field methods of ethnographic research. Both methods are appropriate for the research I am going to conduct, that is the profile of an exemplary EFL teacher in Indonesian secondary schools. In collecting data from the field I will employ both methods and I will follow the steps pointed out by Spradley.
What do I do in my ethnographic study?
Doing ethnographic study involves “living” with the native people of the culture we are trying to study, getting involved with their activities, habits, and with the ways they go about their usual business in their day to day lives. The fundamental aims in doing ethnographic research are to understand people and to get at the meaning of things as the natives perceive them. In other words we are trying to learn from the people in a certain culture. This goes very well with the original subject of cultural anthropology that is the native people of a certain tribe or ethnic group. In my case, however, the native people refer to the teachers of English in Indonesian secondary schools (SMP). In the same line, “culture” here refers to the system of knowledge that the teachers have to enable them to interpret the world around them and to develop strategies to face that world (their job, day to day activities, the requirements for developing their profession, etc.) Lastly, the ‘meaning’ I am trying to find out is how my informants and subjects perceive what “exemplary teachers” mean.
In trying to find the profile of an exemplary EFL teacher in SMP I have four questions that need answers:
- What competencies does an exemplary teacher possess?
- How did he/she achieve those competencies?
- How did he/she get nominated as an exemplary teacher?
- What criteria are used in determining this title?
For each of the four questions I will do the steps elaborated by Spradley. Originally, he elaborates the procedure of ethnographic study into twelve steps as follows:
- selecting informants
- interviewing informants
- making ethnographic records
- asking descriptive questions
- analyzing ethnographic interviews
- making domain analysis
- asking structural questions
- making taxonomic analysis
- asking contrast questions
- making componential analysis
- finding cultural themes
- writing the ethnography.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, we should keep in mind that domain analysis is the first step in analyzing ethnographic data in our study. There are several steps in doing domain analysis, each of which should be done as an ongoing activity, and not after all data have been collected. The ethnographer should also bear in mind that there will probably be more than one domain analyses in the course of the analysis, and it will be determined by the results of the previous analyses. That is precisely the purpose of doing the domain analysis: to discover more semantic relationships, formulate more questions, collect more data, and doing more analyses. It is also the basis for subsequent steps in the ethnography, such as the taxonomic analysis and componential analysis. These analyses should be continued until we reach data saturation and our study is completed.
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