The ethnographic method and techniques
5.2. Why ethnographic techniques as methodological tools?
I come from a science background, having taught Life Sciences and Natural Sciences for 24 years.
This research falls broadly into a qualitative paradigm employing ethnographic techniques as methodological tools. An ethnographic approach has particular value for this study as the school principal can be observed in his natural setting. Creswell (1998) describes an ethnographic approach as interpreting and describing a cultural or social group. Expanding on this definition, Taylor (2002) identifies three actions found in all ethnographic research: firstly, the researcher produces a research text by studying individuals/groups, their lives and their cultural setting;
secondly, the text that is produced is full and nuanced and not simplistic and reductive; and thirdly, the researcher constantly contextualises their work with the latest debates in the field of ethnography and qualitative research. Ethnography as a process demands lengthy observations of individuals and groups. The main research tool I used was participant observation which I was able to do because I was immersed in the day to day lives of the participants in the study and could be a participant observer (‘fly on the wall’) in a non-obtrusive manner.
The term participant observer aptly described my dual role of being an educator at the school (part of the ethnographic field) and a researcher. However, these roles were not so clearly defined when I was acting as the researcher. For example, at times the interaction process was between me and the principal with him knowing that I was acting as a researcher but he expected me to act as an educator of the school. Some participants also expected me to resolve issues that they experienced in school. Whilst having many casual conversations with the staff members, some of them wrote copious notes referring to issues that affect them personally at school. At times my position and
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distance as an ethnographic researcher were tested as I was tempted to agree or disagree with whatever was uttered. There was conflict that I had to deal with, whilst maintaining a cool exterior of an objective ethnographic researcher. I portrayed myself as being a “fly on the wall” to the participants although I felt deeply for their concerns. Furthermore, I had subjective experiences of my own. I bounced these concerns off with a ‘critical friend’ who constantly reminded me that wearing two caps (researcher and educator) in the same school was not an easy task. I had to make psychological shifts when the context changed.
Gaining Access
The principal was supportive of the research process and made it extremely comfortable for me to gain access to the other participants. He reassured staff whenever I was present in his office as the extract below shows:
Principal: Do you want to see me- come in- don’t worry about Mr Karikan, he is doing an observation. He is observing you also- no really it’s part of his study. If anything is confidential you got to tell me- he leaves and he comes back- don’t worry if its personal he will leave- no hard feelings.
Educator:I don’t think it’s personal.
Principal:It’s part of his studies to listen to us to how management takes place, to how leadership takes place- so if you are comfortable, its fine (principal in his office, 22/08/2006).
I particularly enjoyed my observations with the principal as a ‘fly on the wall’. Once the principal made a joke about the danger of me being swatted, and he reminded the participants that this particular “fly” posed no threat to them. The fact that he called me a fly deemed to limit their misgivings (albeit not completely) about my presence. Although I had the full support of the principal, some educators viewed my presence with suspicion. This did not compromise my position. Prior to my study, I had a few altercations with some members of the SMT. However, most were actually quite at ease in my presence. The principal also allayed the fears of most educators. I reinforced his efforts in three ways: firstly, I have a long history in the school and I would like to think from my interactions with staff that I was perceived as trustworthy. Secondly, I gave them my written and verbal assurance that their anonymity would be assured and thirdly, the study had no intention of looking for “personal faults”; or judging them as “good” or ‘bad”
educators/SMT. Needless to say I enjoyed this backing and support from the principal. The richness and volume of data I collected was as a result of his influence. In many interactions with
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the principal, I was the only other person present and very often he spoke about incidents of the week and gave his philosophical take on many issues. One of the SMT members was particularly averse to my presence and especially the tape recorder during his interaction with the principal.
Before he spoke to the principal he often asked me or the principal: “Is that thing on? No, no Mr M.., ask him to put it off.” He was rather adamant about this and insisted on me switching the recorder off.
Fieldwork
I engaged in extensive fieldwork which sometimes took hours as the principal has a penchant for speaking his mind on a range of topics especially when he had a captive audience. To collect data, I used observations, interviews, and document analysis to develop a portrait of the main participant in the group (principal). The field study was not a single method, gathering a single kind of information; rather, I employed six different modes in this research: document data (for example, policies regulating teacher/learner conduct, principal’s log of events, daily notices);
participant observation to describe incidents; informant interviews to learn institutional norms, perceptions and statuses; reflective diaries kept by SMT members; researcher tape recordings of interactions; and casual conversations. Casual conversations took place at unexpected moments during the research process and were useful for triangulation of the rest of the data. I made notes on the casual conversations to capture these interactions in greater detail.
Not all insider accounts are provided by informants responding to an ethnographer’s questions:
they may be unsolicited (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995). For example, Hammersley found the staffroom of a school he was studying an extraordinarily rich source of teacher accounts. Similarly in this study, the principal’s office was the site for these unsolicited accounts as they unfolded.
Permission was sought to observe and record the events in the principal’s office at key moments in the day, for example, before school began. A large part of the verbal interaction was tape- recorded. As time passed during my data capturing, I began to realize that to conduct a successful ethnographic study required a certain level of intimacy with the participants. I was often to be found in the principal’s office in the mornings when teachers came in to sign the attendance register that is kept just outside the principal’s office doorway in full view of him. The frequency of my presence in the principal’s office or in his company at the school gates was deemed by some
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of my colleagues as excessive as they passed hints on these when I joined the staff during the breaks. My presence with the tape recorder during interactions became increasingly acceptable as educators became more comfortable.
Two types of ethnography (institutional and critical ethnography) were explored to provide deeper meaning to the interaction sets. Institutional ethnography, originally developed by Smith (1978), is different from traditional forms of research as it tends to uncover forms of oppression in institutions. The starting point for the ethnographer is the personal experience of individuals in the institution and how these personal experiences are governed by the institutional power relations.
This approach is useful in linking the micro-level of everyday personal experience in school practices with the macro-level of institutions. In Chapter 8, I show how these relations of power regulate the experiences of learners, educators and the SMT by treating the data as a point of entry into social relations to uncover institutional power relations.
The ethnographer has to be committed to understand and convey an understanding of the participants as if s/he is walking in their shoes. However, s/he must also attend to how the participants themselves say it ought to be, typically investigating actions and beliefs in a number of categories of human behaviour” (Wolcott, 1975,p.113). Ethnography also implies that “I cannot cut off what I already know. I cannot amputate knowledge. No one can” (Bhana, 2006: pers.
comm.). Therefore my interpretation of events is coloured by my knowledge and experience of such events. This is made explicit in the analysis section of this chapter. The critical ethnographer also “takes us beneath surface appearances, disrupts the status quo, and upsets both neutrality and taken for granted assumptions by bringing to light underlying and obscure operations of power and control” (Madison, 2005, p. 12). Critical ethnography begins with an “ethical responsibility to address processes of unfairness or injustice within a particular lived domain” (Madison 2005, p.
5). A key assumption of critical ethnography is that all action is mediated by power relations (Mills, 2006, p. 68).
Fine (1994: cited in Madison, 2005, p. 8) outlines three positions in qualitative research which link closely to ethnographic research:
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(i)The ventriloquist stance that merely ‘transmits’ information in an effort toward neutrality and is absent of political or rhetorical stance. The position of the ethnographer aims to be invisible, i.e., the ‘self’ strives to be non-existent in the text; (ii) the positionality of voices is where the subjects themselves are the focus, and their voices carry forward indigenous meanings and experiences that are in opposition to dominant discourses and practices. The position of the ethnographer is vaguely present but not addressed; (iii) the activism stance in which the ethnographer takes a clear position in intervening on hegemonic practices and serves as an advocate in exposing the material effects of marginalized locations while offering alternatives.
This study has used the first two approaches in trying to unearth hegemonic practices.
Positionality is an important concept that shows how one positions oneself in the research process.
For Madison (2005, p. 7), “positionality is vital because it forces us to acknowledge our own power, privilege, and biases just as we are denouncing the power structures that surround our subjects. A concern for positionality is sometimes understood as ‘reflexive ethnography’- it is a turning back on us”. This can have a transformative effect both on the researched and the researcher. As time passed in the field, I found my own subjectivity constantly evolving. I persistently exerted my presence in the fieldwork as an ethnographic ‘I’ by distancing myself from the analyses and being as transparent as possible. In the field I created forms of ‘out-sidedness’.
These took the form of the instrument I used for recording conversations and observations, sitting in an SMT meeting when I had no legitimate grounds to be there, and being a fly on the wall at staff and SGB meetings. Even though I could participate in a staff meeting, I created this distance believing that it would give the participants in the study the license to consider me an outsider. I was forced to switch from insider to outsider as I continued with normal teaching in between data capture. I spent many hours questioning my legitimacy of conducting research amongst my own, and in my own setting, and in the area of management.
Being a level 1 Master Educator3 ,and as an outsider, I removed myself from the discourses around management and leadership, while being an insider I found myself being influenced by management and leadership styles and practices. This put me in an uncomfortable yet unique position of being privy to information that Level 1 educators do not have, especially the discussions held at SMT meetings. I found that as I progressed in the field, the fieldwork became a
3Master Educator is an educator that has chosen a career pathway of a specialist in a subject rather than progressing towards management.
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“deepening of the familiar rather than a discovery of the other” (Chawla, 2006, p. 12). My experience gave me an insider sensitising framework with which I gained deeper understanding of leadership culture and authority frames in this study. As the participants in the study revealed details of their own socialisation, these familiarities resonated with my own socialisation around marriage, material wealth and security, respect for authority, etc. These shifting subjective experiences I encountered, over the period of the study (six years), provided a “case of the ethnographer’s positional travels in one context” (Chawla, 2006, p. 13).