ethnography for classrooms: constructing a reflective curriculum for literacy

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] On: 10 October 2014, At: 04:30 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Pedagogy, Culture & Society Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpcs20 Ethnography for classrooms: constructing a reflective curriculum for literacy Mary Hamilton a a Lancaster University , United Kingdom Published online: 20 Dec 2006. To cite this article: Mary Hamilton (1999) Ethnography for classrooms: constructing a reflective curriculum for literacy, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 7:3, 429-444, DOI: 10.1080/14681369900200074 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681369900200074 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Page 1: Ethnography for classrooms: constructing a reflective curriculum for literacy

This article was downloaded by: [University of Nebraska, Lincoln]On: 10 October 2014, At: 04:30Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Pedagogy, Culture & SocietyPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpcs20

Ethnography for classrooms: constructing a reflectivecurriculum for literacyMary Hamilton aa Lancaster University , United KingdomPublished online: 20 Dec 2006.

To cite this article: Mary Hamilton (1999) Ethnography for classrooms: constructing a reflective curriculum for literacy,Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 7:3, 429-444, DOI: 10.1080/14681369900200074

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681369900200074

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose ofthe Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be reliedupon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shallnot be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Ethnography for classrooms: constructing a reflective curriculum for literacy

Curriculum Studies, Volume 7, Number 3, 1999

429

Ethnography for Classrooms: constructing a reflective curriculum for literacy

MARY HAMILTON Lancaster University, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT This article discusses the possibilities for using ethnographic methods as part of the literacy curriculum at all levels of the education system. It presents a view of ethnography as a research approach with potential as a learning resource, encouraging reflection and theorising about literacy in which teachers and students can engage together. It draws on experiences from further and adult education, higher education and professional development courses, and family literacy programmes, as well as school-based learning.

Introduction

This article discusses the possibilities for using ethnographic methods as part of the literacy curriculum at all levels of the education system. It presents a view of ethnography as a research approach with potential as a learning resource, encouraging reflection and theorising about literacy in which teachers and students can engage together. This is not a new idea, but one that emerges very forcefully from work in the tradition of what has come to be known as the ‘New Literacy Studies’ (NLS). It offers a rather different approach to curriculum from that suggested by the current National Literacy Strategy in the United Kingdom (UK) and similar technical solutions to a perceived crisis in literacy (Snow et al, 1998): an approach which is underpinned by a different philosophy about learning and teaching. In writing this article I do not intend to carry on unproductive debates about the ‘right way to teach’ literacy. Rather, I hope to make a strong argument that developing an ethnographic stance amongst teachers and learners of literacy can promote a critical and reflective (as opposed to a prescriptive) literacy curriculum, which makes effective use of the full range of available methods and content. At a time when standardised curricula are being introduced in a number of

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countries (including Australia, South Africa and North America) in an atmosphere of anxiety about falling literacy standards and the presumed effects of new communication media, such a reflective stance is particularly important.

My own background is working with adult literacy learners, and so I present arguments and examples derived from a range of post-school areas. However, as I have argued elsewhere (Ivanic & Hamilton, 1990), I believe that the approaches I describe, which encourage adults and children to work together, are entirely applicable within the school sector and especially within family literacy programmes. Indeed, Shirley Brice Heath, who laid many of the foundations for the new literacy studies, devotes two chapters of her seminal book Ways with Words to describing how ethnographic methods can be used to make the links between the worlds of literacy outside the classroom and those within schools (Heath, 1983). Though her book is mainly quoted for its insights into the different literacies into which children are socialised in the black community of Tracton, the white, working-class community of Roadville and among the middle-class ‘townspeople’, her bigger project was to enable school teachers to make active use of this ethnographic information in their practice in the desegregated schools in the USA in which she had worked. Many of the insights that we have gained from more recent ethnographic work in the UK [1] are pre-figured in the detailed discussions and examples offered in Heath’s book, and it bears re-reading from this perspective.

Before going on to talk in terms of practical examples, there is some ground-clearing that I want to do. First of all, to offer some definitions of ‘ethnography’ and its associated terms. Secondly, to explain why the ethnographic stance is considered so important, logical and useful, from the perspective of the NLS and other related traditions. This discussion will develop a theoretical justification for the effectiveness of ethnography as an approach to literacy learning, for both teachers and students.

Finally, I go on to show how these ideas have already been directly translated into practice in a variety of literacy programmes in further and adult education, higher education and professional development courses, and in family literacy programmes as well as in schools.

Why Ethnography?

Defining Ethnography for Classrooms

First, I want to be clear about the definition of ‘ethnography’ that I am working with. Ethnography is a research approach, but taken in the sense defined here, it has potential as a learning resource, encouraging reflection, and theorising about literacy and critical engagement with questions about what literacy really is: how it is changing; how it is

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distributed around our neighbourhoods and communities; how we do it; and, perhaps, most importantly of all, what it is for.

Ethnographic research traditions have been developed by anthropologists and utilised in several fields, including education. Traditionally, there are four aspects to this approach (for example, see Goetz & LeCompte, 1984, p. 3). First, ethnography studies real-world settings. Typically, this has been done by focusing on a particular place at a particular point in time. It documents people’s real lives, rather than using decontextualised tests or experiments and as George Marcus emphasises:

it is ‘predicated upon attention to the everyday, an intimate knowledge of face-to-face communities and groups’. (Marcus, 1995, p. 99)

Secondly, the approach is holistic, aiming at whole phenomena; in the case of literacy, the phenomena we study are the cultural practices involving written communication. Thirdly, the work is multi-method, drawing on a variety of research techniques; and generating a range of data, including both spoken and written, and physical artefacts. Interviewing is often combined with detailed observation and with the systematic collection of documents. Fourthly, ethnography is interpretative, aiming to represent the participants’ perspectives. Carrying out an ethnography has traditionally involved immersing oneself in an unfamiliar culture over a long period of time – usually several years of fieldwork. A number of researchers have extended this approach to doing fieldwork in their own society – making the familiar strange – in a way that blurs the distinction between anthropology and sociology with its traditions of participant observation.

Traditional ethnography has been extensively critiqued in recent years (Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Atkinson, 1990; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1998), particularly in terms of the research relationships involved and ethnographers’ claims that they can fully represent the perspectives of their informants. The processes of data collection and writing, and the power relationships involved in doing ethnography have been problematised and have led to new strategies involving participants in the decision-making processes of the research. In our own work in a local community in the North of England, we developed a notion of ‘collaborative ethnography’ which involves people documenting their own realities (through photography and collection of documents) and a stage of returning people’s words from interviews to them in transcript form and discussing the data we have collected, and our interpretations with them (see Hodge & Jones, 1996; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Hamilton, 1998).

Clearly, there are a range of activities that might be called ‘doing ethnography’ some closer to the traditional meanings than others. In

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discussing later what might be appropriate and realistic for activities within classrooms, it may be more accurate to refer to using ethnographic methods or having an ethnographic ‘stance’, rather than carrying out a full-blown ethnography and the aspect of collaborative relationships is an important one.

Ethnography and the New Literacy Studies

The model of ethnography I am working with here fits in very comfortably with the perspective of what is becoming known as New Literacy Studies or NLS. Those of us working with this approach advocate a broader understanding of what is included when we talk about literacy, suggesting that we should look beyond texts themselves to what people do with literacy, with whom, where and how. That is, we focus attention on the cultural practices within which the written word is embedded – the ways in which texts are socially regulated and used. This leads us to consider the differentiated uses of literacy in varying cultural contexts. It leads us to consider not just print literacy, but other mass media, including visual and oral ways of communicating (see Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1996) and especially the way that the use of these media, using both old (print) and new (electronic) technologies, is inter-linked. Writing becomes as central as reading and other ways of interacting with print culture are identified.

The focus shifts from literacy as deficit or lack, something people do not have, to the many different ways that people engage with literacy, recognising difference and diversity, and challenging how these differences are valued within our society. The NLS involves us in looking beyond educational settings to vernacular practices and informal learning, and to the other official settings in which literacies play a key role. Learning does not take place just in classrooms and is not concerned just with methods.

These developments represent a significant change of perspective on literacy, a basic paradigm shift, in our understanding of reading and writing. The shift is from a psychological or cognitive model of a set of skills, to one that includes the many practices associated with reading and writing. It is a social view of literacy, rather than a purely psychological one. It has to be historically and socially situated. As Brian Street puts it, it is a shift from literacy as an autonomous gift to be given to people, to an ideological understanding of literacy, placing it in its bigger context of institutional purposes and power relationships (see Street, 1995).

This shift has implications for how we work with literacy. First, we have to recognise that there is not one literacy, but many different literacies. What does this mean? As soon as we move away from seeing literacy as simply a set of skills, to viewing it as practices with which we are actively engaged, it becomes obvious that there are many different

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ways in which reading and writing are used, and that people are developing new literacies all the time. In his book ‘The Social Mind’, James Gee talks about how literacies are linked to different discourse communities that we are all part of. These are made up of people, things, characteristic ways of talking, acting, thinking, believing, valuing, interpreting – and reading and writing are an integral part of these activities and ways of being in the world (Gee, 1992). Often, we are not very aware of the rules of the communities we are familiar with, but we become sharply aware of them when we move into a new group or institution that assumes a different set of rules and we may suddenly come to feel like a novice in this new situation.

Another implication of the shift in understanding literacy is that it places at centre stage people’s own definitions of literacy because there is no one standard that is valid for everyone, for all time. This means exploring both, as teachers, our own starting points, and with students, their starting points and assumptions about literacy.

This is where ethnography comes in as a strategy for applying new views of literacy in educational settings (settings which may include classrooms of all kinds, whether nursery, primary, secondary or adult basic education, further and higher education). Applying new views of literacy within educational practice also means introducing them into professional development, where teachers can address questions of the role of reading and writing in their own lives, and how this affects their professional practice.

In summary, then, the NLS encourages us to be reflective about the everyday practices that we are all part of, to ask questions, rather than to assume that we already know what literacy is. As part of developing the theoretical argument for the effectiveness of an ethnographic stance in education, in the next section, I look at the main research traditions on which the NLS has drawn.

Traditions of Using or Advocating Ethnographic Methods in the Classroom

The ethnographic approach that the NLS promotes brings together existing traditions of researching and learning that in all represent a substantial body of experience. In this section, I will review this work, looking first at the research tradition of socio-linguistics, and then briefly at traditions of participatory research and reflective learning that have been fundamental to the agenda of those promoting democratic and critically-reflective relationships within educational and community settings. What all these approaches have in common is ‘a history of concern for educational equity in the context of cultural and linguistic diversity’ (Egan-Robertson & Bloome, 1998, p. 24). As Sue Gardner puts it: when these approaches are applied to the literacy classroom they deal

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with ‘the questions around language and social stratification and around writing to think, and learning to see yourself as a thinker at all’ (Gardner, 1992, p. 4).

The NLS owes a great deal to socio-linguistics with its interest in exploring patterns of spoken language diversity, both in everyday speech communities and in classroom settings. John Gumperz and Del Hymes were founders of this tradition and elaborated much of its methodology (see Gumperz & Hymes, 1972). Egan Robertson & Bloome (1998) offer a useful summary of this tradition in relation to classrooms and a range of examples of how it has been deployed in schools. They suggest that it has contributed understandings in three important ways: (1) by helping to redefine what counts as learning and education; (2) by looking at the mutual effects of academic learning and participation in school on the one hand and family and community life on the other; and (3) by focusing attention on how cultural knowledge is transmitted, via spoken and written language.

Shirley Heath’s work draws on this tradition. In particular, she developed it to look at patterns of interactions with written texts, as well as spoken language in households, community venues and groups. She looked at literacy in relation to non-verbal differences, for example, the ways that toys are used and stored, the time/space distribution of activities and resources, and also to the detail of employment practices in workplaces where children’s futures lay.

Heath presents a very specific set of outcomes from using ethnographic methods in classrooms (see Heath, 1983, pp. 339–340). For her, the point of ‘doing ethnography’ in educational settings is not to collect ‘folk heritage’ materials for their own sake or in order to broaden the curriculum, but in terms of the ways it engages children and teachers in producing particular kinds of knowledge. She suggest that doing ethnography: (1) provides a foundation of familiar knowledge to serve as context for classroom information; (2) engages students in collecting and analysing familiar ways of knowing and translating these into scientific or school-accepted labels, concepts and generalisations; and (3) provides students with meaningful opportunities to learn ways of talking about using language to organise and express information.

In line with this view, Heath uses a highly structured pedagogic process, with very specific instructions to learners about how to do ethnography. For example, they are required to collect both oral and written evidence to verify and document their observations. Children take on the roles of participant observers, hypothesis builders and information synthesisers. These are everyday habits which are seen in new terms: as the recording of events, discovering of patterns, and deciding on options in making decisions and children learn a ‘meta-language’ for linking their ways of looking at the familiar to ways of learning the unfamiliar content information of the classroom. Examples

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given are from the science classroom (growing and use of local foods); the language classroom (keeping records of the reading and writing done in their own communities, collecting examples of ‘message tokens’); the maths classroom (recording examples of confusing transactions from everyday experience).

Not only do children come to understand school knowledge in terms of their familiar, community knowledge through this process, but teachers learn, too. As Heath puts it, the students provide information for the teacher to question and integrate into her existing knowledge, rather than the other way round. The process of mutual learning and questioning, the focus on translation between different kinds of knowledge aligns this approach with philosophies of teaching and learning that have developed from the reflective practitioner traditions and participatory research, as we will see below.

Literacy work in adult education has also been influenced by socio-linguistic approaches, and offers some excellent examples of how theory and practice can be linked in the classroom. Sue Gardner, in The Long Word Club describes methods that she developed in the 1980s to map the socio-linguistic patterns of language use with adult students in multi-lingual classrooms so that these could be used as a basis for understanding and developing literacy (Gardner, 1992). Students were asked to draw maps of their speech relationships with a range of people with whom they had contact in their family, personal and working lives. These maps were then used as a basis for discussions about language variety, attitudes toward dialects and minority languages, as well as more general issues such as students’ views on the need for direct teaching about grammar and other methods of language study.

Other work around the same time involved working with students of Afro-Caribbean origin, exploring their language and literacy histories, the relationships between standard and dialect forms, and the links between language and identity (Craven & Jackson, 1986; Schwab & Stone, 1987). The ILEA work included an central component of professional development and curriculum materials development as part of the project.

The NLS has also drawn on a body of ideas from adult and community education, that stress the triangle of connections between teaching, learning and research. Hamilton et al (1992) discuss these traditions, and how they have interfaced with literacy research and education to produce a powerful set of arguments for the value of a reflective, ethnographical stance for the classroom. One such tradition is that of popular education, a philosophical and practical approach derived from the ideas of Paulo Freire (Arnold & Burke, 1983; Freire, 1985, 1994; Kirkwood & Kirkwood, 1989). This approach emphasises the idea of teachers and learners as equal partners in constructing knowledge, based on a process of researching the local realities in which they both live. All

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participants in this process have expertise that they can contribute and all learn from one another. Within adult literacy education these ideas have been translated into practical activities involving community publishing, oral history, autobiography and reminiscence work (see, for example, Gatehouse Books, 1985, 1992; Duffin, 1990; O’Rourke & Mace, 1992; Mace, 1995). An important organising concept behind these activities is the notion of voice and authorship, the articulation and documentation of experiences that have been historically submerged or side-lined.

Popular education takes further steps than this, however, in specifically encouraging participants to pose problems about their everyday experience and to start from these to explore unequal power relations and contradictions in the conditions that confront them. It is a small step from this to participatory action research that has been influential in adult educational settings, and also within trade unions and community group settings where the emphasis has been on using research activities and the knowledge gained from them to promote material changes in participants’ lives (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Whyte, 1991; Reason, 1994; Shuttleworth et al, 1994; Steinberg & Kincheloe, 1998). Participatory action research shares many concerns with feminist approaches to research methodologies (Harding, 1987; Reinharz, 1992; Stanley & Wise, 1993; Maynard & Purvis, 1994) in developing strategies to create more equal relationships between researcher, and researched and collaborative construction of understandings derived from the research.

A further influential tradition has been that of teacher researcher and the reflective practitioner, which are familiar approaches within school-based professional development and research (Schön, 1983; Somekh, 1995), as well as adult literacy (Gillespie, 1989). These approach the question of how teachers and other professionals develop theoretical knowledge about their practice, which can be useful to them in developing that practice in the future. In this tradition, as in those above, reflective research activities are seen as an integral part of teaching and learning, and the construction of knowledge. The way we approach and theorise about literacy crucially shapes our practice. It is seen to be important for teachers to examine the assumptions they hold and to make their own theories explicit. This is as important for teachers as it is for learners and, in fact, joint explorations are the best way forward. Such reflective theory can help see familiar things in a new way, ‘a shift of perspective’ to ask a new set of questions that may push our thinking out of the old ruts and to find things interesting that previously were taken for granted. In terms of literacy, such theorising may enable us to see literacy in the bigger picture beyond the patch where we are. It can, for example help connect the work that goes on in different educational sectors – especially to link the aims of literacy inside the formal D

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educational system with changes in social and economic life more generally.

There is a particular value in articulating theory at time of change or crisis, or when new initiatives are introduced, such as the imposition of a formulaic state curriculum, new types of programmes or teaching in new institutional contexts. The process of articulating theory can help teachers to develop a way of talking about what they are doing that reflects their own ideals and priorities and to make clear choices about how to shape their activities rather than leaving them vulnerable to solutions imposed by others (see Sanguinetti, 1994).

Theorising can encourage debate and questioning, and gives a basis for constructive critique. It counters any trends towards prescriptive, ‘technical fix’ notions of what teachers need to know that have worried many in recent educational developments (e.g. Helsby, 1999; Helsby & McCulloch, 1997). By encouraging a broad understanding of what literacy is, it breaks down monolithic discourses around literacy in policy and in the media that actually hide a much more complex reality. We need the theory generated through reflective practice to help us engage with current policy and the research that is used to justify it, to help us assess, and name its strengths and limitations. An ethnographic stance can help teachers and students to access this theory.

Practical Examples of Ethnography for the Literacy Classroom

I have argued above that ethnography is about self-reflection, and observing closely the everyday practices going on around us. It is a stance from which the world is viewed, as much as a method or technique. It can be doing research focused on everyday practices, either inside or outside of the classroom. It can also be used as a method of professional development. This section offers a variety of examples where people have creatively merged the boundaries between research, teaching and learning.

The first set of examples is concerned with research on everyday practices in local communities outside of formal educational settings. This research involves close observation, detailed interviewing and analysis of texts, and is carried out in the form of ethnographic work in specific, bounded communities. There is a growing body of such data now within the UK: my own work has been the Literacy in the Community study (see Barton & Hamilton, 1998). In this we have been documenting the reading and writing which people do in their everyday lives in Lancaster, England, including what goes on in people’s homes and how this is different from the media stereotypes.

The sense of there being different literacies is very clear in multilingual communities where different literacy practices can be associated with different languages (see for example, Hodge & Jones

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(1996, working in Blackburn and in North Wales), Bhatt (1995, working in Leicester) and Saxena (1994, in London). Eve Gregory is currently looking at roles of siblings in supporting literacy learning in the Bangladeshi community in East London (Gregory, 1998, 1999). Gemma Moss, who is working in primary school classrooms to explore how gender differences in literacy learning emerge, has given the children cameras which they use to take pictures of their home environment for later discussion.

A further set of examples come from institutional contexts which are neither everyday nor educational in the traditional sense of the term. For example, Anita Wilson has carried out a detailed ethnographic study of prison literacy (Wilson, 1996). This is an institutional setting where there are extremely strong public stereotypes of illiteracy and of problems with reading and writing. To take one example, she has investigated the amount of letter writing that goes on. Away from the education wing of prisons and within a group that you would expect using little reading and writing – young males – there is a tremendous amount of letter writing and it has great social significance.

Working in a therapeutic setting Susie Parr has adapted an ethnographic approach in her work with stroke patients suffering from aphasia who typically lose many of their literacy skills (Parr, 1995). She describes her dissatisfaction with the assessment methods traditionally available – functional assessments based on a fixed list of tasks and skills, and cognitive neuropsychological assessments that led to overly mechanistic and reductionist therapies. She set about interviewing aphasic patients about how their literacy practices had changed as a result of their stroke, about their strategies for coping with these changes and how they perceived their situation. She found that people respond in a variety of ways to the loss of previous skills, developing complex support and back-up systems with the help of friends and family, and not always wanting to regain previous levels of literacy skill, preferring to withdraw from certain roles or move into different areas of activity. These responses were key to deciding what kind of therapeutic programme would be appropriate for a given person.

The third example is a different kind of approach, inspired by ideas from community writing and publishing. The Workplace Basic Skills project organised by Fiona Frank has set up residential weekends which bring together participants to compare their practices in the workplace, and the role of literacy and basic skills courses in their working lives, and how these relate to changing technologies and practices in the workplace. Participants from a range of different workplaces have been offered the opportunity to research and document their experiences with this particular focus in mind (see Frank, 1992).

The translation of such research into educational settings is just a small step. As an example within adult education, Nora Hughes, who was a member of the Diploma in Literacy course at Goldsmiths College,

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London took Mukul Saxena’s (1994) description of the literacy practices of members of a multilingual Punjabi community in Southall and used it to design a set of activities for her ESOL classes, transforming her students into ethnographers, researching their own communities and generating new curriculum materials and methods in the process (Hughes, 1992).

A second example is the ‘Connect’ Family literacy project in Lothian in which teachers and parents co-research home practices and use the information to inform curricula for family literacy courses (see Keen, 1995). In this case, a clearly thought through stance on family literacy drew on Elsa Auerbach’s (1989) discussion of the relationship between home and school in family literacy programmes in the USA, and has lead to a practical strategy. Activities involve interviews, parents keeping literacy diaries and ‘local investigations’ that document the ways the reading and writing are used in the local community, including the variety of print that can be seen around the environment in which people conduct their lives. Roz Ivanic, at Lancaster is currently engaged in co-research between primary school teachers and parents of children at Key Stage 2, to explore the ways in which children carrying out school projects, draw on the resources of home and neighbourhood.

Higher Education and Professional Development

David Barton (1999) describes two examples that come from teaching in higher education. In an undergraduate course entitled Literacy Studies, students are asked to explore the literacy practices of any domain, selected by them. They document the practices using photography and field notes, collect documents and artefacts, and interview people about their practices. Students have carried out studies of literacy in a surprising variety of domains, associated with motorway driving, rock climbing in the Lake District, working in shops and other work-places, and the intricacies of scoring in cricket. One student researched betting shop literacy – a highly specialised and multi-media set of practices which is transmitted as an oral culture. In this setting, there are no written instructions, it is assumed that you know what to do, or you learn from friends.

As an example of how this approach can be used in courses of professional development David Barton worked with a group of Bangladeshi literacy trainers studying in Lancaster. As part of the course students were given disposable cameras and asked to explore the literacy practices of a domain of their choice. The photographs were then used in class discussions to explore the students’ perceptions of literacy in an unfamiliar culture, and how literacy is socially situated, how it belongs to particular places and times. The aim of such courses is to encourage participants to keep in mind a triangle of their own literacy practices as trainee teachers, the practices their students engage in (in and out of the

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classroom) and the practices typical of the broader context of the society in which they live. They should be constantly moving their focus around this triangle, and making comparisons and connections between these three sets of practices.

Media Studies

As a final example, ethnographic methods can also include looking at how the media represent and inform our views of literacy – both visual images and textual stories, looking at advertisements, newspapers, soaps and novels. Gary Roberts and Jane Prowse report a study carried out in Scotland where a family literacy group documented the literacy events and practices depicted in soap story lines, and compared these with the literacy they engaged with in their home lives (Roberts & Prowse, 1999). The group found major discrepancies between the two, with much familiar, daily literacy being invisible in the soaps. The research also increased peoples’ awareness of just how much literacy they are involved with as part of their everyday activities.

Tracking the representations of literacy in newspapers can also reveal new understandings about literacy. Pictures and stories of literacy practices in newspapers are mostly not associated with stories that are directly about literacy or education, but they are part of stories about political events, sport, business, disputes between neighbours and brushes with bureaucracy. Each newspaper selects different aspects of literacy to carry its stories. These offer a ‘window’ onto literacy practices in contemporary societies and reveal new insights into the ways we use and value literacy (see Hamilton, 1999). For example, these photographs depict the still central and symbolic role of the signature (as in the signing of political treaties, football stars or business deals). The role of literacy in actions of defiance and opposition is evident in the many photos of demonstrations containing banners, graffiti and posters. Other pictures show the ways in which literacy is used to display professional status, and how it is experienced as a threat or a means of control over peoples’ lives (whether the picture is of anxious students queuing up to find out about examination results or of identity papers being checked by soldiers at a border crossing). Looking at these different sources of data about literacy reveals a great deal about the symbolic and ritual significance of reading in our lives, as well as its functional uses.

Conclusion: developing reflective partnerships

An important contribution of the social practice approach to literacy is that it enables all of us, within and beyond education, to appreciate the variety and creativity of everyday literacy practices, to question received wisdom about literacy, and it encourages us to find out more about

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practices in other settings and to devise educational responses to these growing understandings.

A social practice approach to literacy argues for the importance of self-consciously researching local culture and perspectives on literacy, and building this knowledge into learning programmes, using it as a basis for discussion and investigation of literacy issues with learners. This does not necessarily mean incorporating vernacular literacies into formal teaching by directly using or modelling them in formal educational settings, since this inevitably recontexualises them and thus changes their meaning. The basic issue is that of acknowledging and respecting the existence of vernacular practices; understanding that educational practices are not the only literacy practices. Rather, they are a specialised and powerful set of practices which may complement and enhance the practices of home and community, but which are also capable of violating or devaluing them. The imposition of standardised curricula that are not sensitive to local difference, in many cases, increases the distance between home and educational practices, and may lead to alienation of both parents and children from schooled literacies.

Students of all ages, adults and children, are involved in a whole set of everyday cultural practices, in which they engage with other people significant to them in family and friendship groups. The classroom teacher typically, has limited opportunity to get to know about these practices, especially where students belong to a culture very different from their own. As teachers and researchers we need to find ways of developing a reflective curriculum which can mediate between homes, communities, schools and adult education programmes, and to help learners, both children and adults, develop a sense of their own expertise and authorship, to take control of available literacies, and put them to work to benefit themselves and their communities. It has been the argument of this article that taking an ethnographic stance can make a substantial contribution toward this goal in helping teachers and students make the necessary translations between forms of knowledge in different contexts, which will enable this mediation to take place.

Correspondence

Mary Hamilton, Department of Educational Reseach, Centre for the Study of Education and Training, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, United Kingdom ([email protected]).

Note

[1] The ideas on which this article are based have been developed over the last few years as I have been involved with a detailed ethnographic study of literacy in one local community; see Barton & Hamilton (1998).

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