Ethnography as a Methodology

          According to Fetterman (1998), ethnography is the art and science of describing a group or culture.  The description may be of a small tribal group in an exotic land or a classroom in middle-class suburbia.  It came from the Greek ethnos = folk/people and graphein = writing.  It identifies its roots in sociology and anthropology.  Hence, ethnography is a social science research method which relies heavily on up-close, personal experience and possible participation, not just observation, by researchers trained in the art of ethnography or what we call the ‘immersion’.  Itlet’ involves a commitment to get close to the subject being observed in its natural setting, to be factual and descriptive in reporting what is observed, and to find out the points of view of participants in the domain observed.

            As an example, let’s have “Measuring Language of Wider Communication (L2) and Local Community Language (L1) Literacy Levels in a Bilingual Community of Indonesia” by Howard Shelden and Kay Ringenberg (2003) of SIL International (Indonesia).  The study intends to measure the reading and writing ability in both the national and local languages.  The instrument design makes use of some locally authored material and local interviews.  And this locally authored material is a constructed modified informal reading inventory called reading proficiency survey.  This material focused on the following to assess the literateness of the respondents of the study:

v  Writing samples

Ø  Ability to write text legibly such as their full name and simple data (fill a form)

Ø  Ability to construct from memory previously leaned words and sentences (dictation)

Ø  Ability to create text using proper language syntax (creative writing)

v  Reading selections which increase in difficulty (an adapted miscue analysis)

Ø  Selections at three or four levels of difficulty (or more for some developed program)

Ø  Record errors

Ø  Comprehension check

§  Retelling (counting the major elements given from the story)

§  Questions (on explicit and implicit information)

The researchers focused more to measure the ability to read a passage with 90% accuracy, to answer comprehension questions on that passage with 60% accuracy and to collect writing samples.  However, sociolinguistic information on the newly researched language was included by the researchers to gather those items which are critical for an evaluation of the level of motivation and literateness for the language group involved.  And to measure the discussed variables, two major approaches was proposed by the researchers for the survey:

a.       Those items that could be collected through survey questions at the time of another baseline study data collection; and

b.      A significant sampling of the level of reading – writing proficiency in both Indonesian (L2) and the local language (L1).

According to Fraenkel et.al. (2012), ethnographic research is relatively needs long time to study a phenomena, most probably six months or more.  But the study above took them only two weeks to finish their work: three days for constructing the instrument; two days for the community discussions; three days for recruiting and training of local interviewers/administrators; and the trip to the four villages took them four days.  So, it’s quite vague for me if it is really six months or more or it can be shorter in ethnographic research because of some researchers that covered only six months less to finish the work.

Also, ethnographic research is collaborative where the research involves the participation of stakeholders other than the researchers.  In the study, some stakeholders from the place of study were recruited and trained as interviewers or administrators most especially those who are fluent in the national language and local language.  This gave a positive effect to those who were able to participate in the study as interviewers or administrators because they have learned skills in data collection and some techniques that they can use for something similar for other purposes.

In ethnographic research, the samples of persons studied by ethnographers are typically small (often only a few individuals, or a single class) and do not permit generalization to a larger population.  In the study, four villages were surveyed with 120 reading samples collected and over 150 head of households interviewed which is quite a big population.  One more thing, according to the researchers, survey is used as data collection procedure other than interview.  And I’m quite not sure if survey is one of the data collection procedures for ethnographic research.  Because according to Fraenkel et.al. (2012), the two major means of data collection in ethnographic research are participant observation and detailed interviewing.

However, ethical concerns are carefully addressed by the researchers.  They discussed to the community what is all about the study, hence, informed consent was attained.  Also, the privacy of each individual was also carefully guarded through turning all the forms to the researchers in waterproof bags.  Hence, confidentiality of the information was addressed.  And because the interviewers and some administrators were from the community where the study is done, the respondents are surely away from harm.

Thus, the study found that using modified informal reading inventory has proven valuable to motivate local leadership towards action plans for literacy in both L1 and L2.  Furthermore, using reading proficiency survey give reliable data for use with funding agencies to obtain the needed resources for improving the current situation.  Although the instrument is not a standardized one, it has a useful function for community development workers by providing them with an accurate picture of local community’s ability to obtain new information through the printed page.  And that’s the operation of an ethnographic research, to develop a picture of the social or cultural whole of that which an ethnographer is studying.

References:

Fraenkel, J.R. et.al. (Eighth edition). (2012). How to design and evaluate research in education. 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Shelden, H. & Ringenberg, K. (2003). Measuring Language of Wider Communication (L2) and Local Community Language (L1) Literacy Levels in a Bilingual Community of Indonesia. Philippine Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 34, No. 1, 151-163.