Karen Borgnakke



Yüklə 97 Kb.
tarix02.10.2018
ölçüsü97 Kb.
#71634


Karen Borgnakke Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen

karen@comart.dk & karenb@hum.ku.dk

Paper Higher Education Close Up 5, Lancaster July 2010


The methodological challenge: To cover a field of practice by mapping the field from macro to mezo to micro levels
Karen Borgnakke

There has been increasing interest for ethnographic methods in educational research. In methodological terms it means a revival for classical fieldwork and social cultural studies in educational practice and learning. But even classic fieldwork in it self seems to be a methodological good answer it has also been renewed for example by approaches from youth research media and ICT research. At the same time has development of research strategies been combined with evaluative research and strategies for school development and organization learning. On this background my own research projects characterised by long term fieldwork and intensive case studies in higher education have challenged empirical research in the whole spectra from political ethnography to ethnography in learning.

It is the experience that methodological combinations, mapping and case studies are well suited for maintaining the complex problems empirical research in education and learning are facing. But the changing levels, system and organizational perspectives, as well as shifts between the points of view of teachers and students, are also posing a challenge for new thinking about how the field, its activities and actors are involved. Here, my latest projects have demonstrated the importance of experimenting with the new technologies: the internet, websites, project portals, environments of evaluation and learning, will become tools, both research-wise and in terms of the professional and learning-oriented practice (Borgnakke 2007, 2008, 2010).
I relate my paper to the Think pieces: Unreflective Practice? Case Study and the Problem of Theoretical Inference, by Martyn Hammersley, and Wicked Issues in Situating Theory in Close Up Research, by Paul Trowler. My own experiences point at Trowlers description of the challenge: “There is generally a lack of integration between mezo and micro levels of analysis. The public policy literature for example operates on the levels of whole organizations, professions and middle range theory, while close up research like ours operates at the micro level. (…) What is needed is both theoretical explanation of collaborative behaviour at this level and a way of spanning the mezo and micro levels of explanation. The spanning of levels of analysis is a fundamental challenge to social science.”

The idea with my paper is to examine the challenge and outline the perspective for a future international project. The project is called: Transitions - Between the Scholastic, the Professional and the Academic Learning Contexts. The challenge is: how to cover, how to compare, but also how to contrast the different levels and practical consequences in three learning contexts. In terms of strategies for the empirical close up analysis the challenge will be: how to develop a proper combination of i)critical discourse analysis referring to the political macro-level, ii) analysis of the discourse practice at the institutional mezo level, combined with iii) close up analysis of the actual learning practice (Borgnakke 1996a, 1996b, 2004a, 2005, Fairclough 1995, 2005). Let me elaborate the background and the challenge further below.


The background and the challenge

Research strategies and the relation to classic ethnographic approaches are challenged in the concrete process of research (Spindler 1987, Borgnakke 1996b, Woods 1996, Brewer 2000, Willis 2000, Eisenhart 2001, Hammersley and Atkinson 2005). Herby will the ethnographic approaches also be developed and in my case be developed in very close relation with the national and international research projects and with the EU-project CLASP (Borgnakke 2004, 2005, 2007, Jeffrey 2006). In these projects the collections of data, discourse analysis and case studies are covering both the macro, mezzo and micro levels of the educational sector and institutions. The data collections and case studies in the different learning context are related to upper secondary school as well as to programs at the university and at teacher training college. Covering the learning practice the data collection mirror in empirical sense the concept of learning as a lived and complex process (Borgnakke 1996b) and learning as situated and contextualised (Lave & Wenger 1991, Borgnakke 2004b, 2005). Using material/product collection, interviews and methods of observation the case studies additionally refer to all the three organisational levels:




  • The level of management (organisational materials, profile, strategies and innovation)

  • The level of co-workers, teacher/teacher relations (curriculum, plans, innovative projects )

  • The level of teaching and learning practice, teacher/student relations, student/student relations (the course and the process of learning)

It is the experience that the methodological combinations, mapping and case studies are well suited for maintaining the complex problems of the project. It is also the experience that the changing levels, system and organisational perspectives, as well as shifts between the points of view of teachers and students, is the challenge.

Against this outlined background the idea with my paper is to extract the methodological challenges recalling the classic fieldwork and the basic arguments for the framework. My main point is that if we want to cope with the field of practice and if we want to cover issues both at macro, mezo and micro levels we need to renew the classic fieldwork challenged by the basic argument ‘fieldwork needs time’ and by discovering…


  • The interplay between macro, mezo and micro levels and the whole process of implementation

  • The organisational culture and the discursive practice among professionals

  • The learning context

  • The challenges from both formal and non-formal learning, scholastic culture and youth culture.

In the paper I will analyse the challenges and give examples from the background in the 1980th and 1990th and from the current projects and discussions in the 2000th. But let me start with the basis and the basic argument.
The basic argument: Fieldwork needs time

When using the word long-term fieldwork we recall the classic ethnographic tradition where you spend at least a year in the field, and a tradition for single-person-research. The headline is ‘time’ and the main potentials in fieldwork is ‘to cover a field of practice by mapping out the field from macro to micro levels concerned of a holistic understanding of the social and cultural practice’.



To this I will add that fieldwork as the long stay has especially potentials when you study processes, the process of implementation, teaching and learning processes. Having the ethnographic tradition and potentials in mind you can look upon the short-term fieldwork as an intensive field study, where you spend at least a month and make a focused and intensive study of a school or a practical development work or comparative studies in different learning contexts
I advocate for the classic point of view: as a researcher you need to be in the field for quite a long period. My advocating is caused by the need for educational research to come closer to the process and the act of learning. It is demanding time. Time and more time is not all one need, but it’s a kind of basic needs, needed to be said up against the newest tendencies in evaluative research for example. Sometime the evaluative researcher seems to do it all, covering all, even concluding on learning results, on a basis where the investigator only have been in the field for a few days (just a visit) or only have done some interview. In the framework of evaluation and assessment in late modern educational thinking it maybe makes sense. But as qualitative research on the practical processes it makes no sense. My current example will be the reform and the process of implementation in the field of upper secondary school. The process of implementation regarded over realistic time will be at least a 5 years period. At all levels, and in all processes from macro- to micro levels, you can recognize how the professional action will refer to years and months to make sense. The point is that in the world of school, education and learning time is contextualized as the long stay both for teachers, students and researchers. To recall the long stay and to provoke the attitude ‘just a visit’ the classic argument from Malinowski (1922) could be the argument we need to put educational ethnography on more holistic terms and time. But we do have a problem. If the long stay in the field is one, two and maybe more years, we do not have time to do more than a few field works in our whole research life. So fare I have done three fieldworks in classic sense – each over a three years period - and ‘next time’ it will be fieldwork as following up my former research. I have done several intensive field studies and case studies in research teams within the evaluative research, and I have claimed the classic standpoint. But I am also realistic and recognize the perspective in comparative case studies, where you are in the field for weeks and month, but not years. Still I consider the long stay and my former field work and its enormous archive as my main research basis. I can go to the archive and compare it with the new case studies. At the same time I am fully aware of a fact: we need to produce the empirical surplus especially ethnographic field research and the long stay can give us. We need to produce the analytic surplus as well. Reaching the point of empirical and analytical statements it seems like each generation of education researcher is questioning the tradition recognizing the necessity of renewing. State-of-the-art articles, as example an article from 2001 by Margaret Eisenhart, could be in focus. Herby we can recognize the necessity of renewing in a new historical light, namely in the light of late modernity.
The necessity of renewing in the light of late modernity

Eisenhart’s article was titled Educational Ethnography Past, Present, and Future: Ideas to Think With. Eisenhart gave an insight full state of the art, but she was also (self-) critical, and asks anthropologist and ethnographers to reconsider old standpoint, basic knowledge about culture, gender, class, ethnicity facing the late modern circumstances and consequences. The basic logic in the argument seems to be that facing the world in changing we need to change research methods and epistemology in the same act. I agree, and as also Eisenhart notices, has research already changed and since the 1970th inspired of quantitative and qualitative research strategies in critical educational sociology (Borgnakke 1996a). Further we find to day qualitative research include the use of the new media, interviewing and observing the new generation and questions of gender and ethnicity in the modernized school system and culture. In many ways educational research has moved in the new directions - almost in the second the educational policy dictated the news. I’m not saying that educational researchers just are following the political agenda - they (or we) have a research agenda of our own. But I am saying that educational researchers seem to be very sensitive and willing to study the newest agenda and incorporate the newest methods and inspirations from the research arena. Therefore the problem is not, as Eisenhart argues on behalf of the conventional anthropology/ethnography, about being aware of the necessity of renewing. The problem is rather about being aware of what it takes, and what it costs to follow the process of modernization and the new cultural diversity within the field of education and learning. Furthermore the problem is about insisting of the relationship between the methodological potentials and the empirical issues and subjects. In terms of this paper it means: insisting of the classic attitude to ethnographic field work up against the newest; insisting of the necessity of studies in living dynamic processes. With that as the reason and background the characteristic spectrum within ethnography, that means mapping out the field, participating observation, interview/ongoing conversations, material collections, can be chosen and reflected as ‘a choice’ in methodological terms.

Fare to eager to renew the conventional ethnography Eisenhart overlooked the actual potentials in classic framework. And if educational research has to deliver facts, evidence based overviews and analyses of late modern school life and learning, we need to insist of doing the process of research in the same context, rhythm of time and every day routine as those actors observed. Then we need to follow the process of implementation of new experiments and development work within the organization culture, among teachers as professionals, or among the students as learners. The process of learning is in it self rather than ‘fast and easy’ slower and highly complex. By the new agenda, ‘The learning organization’, ‘ICT and learning’ we are getting used to the spell the opportunities out in terms of enhancing the quality and measuring the effect. And when it comes to the question about complexity it seems to be a characteristic skill within the system, the computer, Internet or in Cyber Space. But compared to human interaction it is of nearly no complexity. Nothing is more complex than human, cultural and societal action - and interaction. Nothing is more complex than the process of teaching and learning in real context. This is not only a point - it is also the very start of departure for educational ethnography covering practical complexity in real context.

When it comes to ‘the real context’, I agree with Eisenhart stressing that one of the important issues in terms of methodology is “how to investigate “context”” and how to balance the relation between the learning context and the broader political context.

I agree that the concept of ‘determination’ is problematic, as Eisenhart stressed
“In conventional ethnographies, including many school ethnographies, there was a tendency to view the immediate context (e.g. a school, a classroom) as if it were almost completely determined by the unidirectional influence of wider, outside forces (community norms, school districts politics, federal regulations, etc.).”

(Eisenhart 2001)


But even Eisenhart is right according to former positions in Ethnography we need to bring in nuances referring for example to classroom research, action research or evaluative research in general, or referring to the analytic approaches as “The hidden curriculum”, “The hidden gender agenda”. The whole point - and the empirical findings - was based on ‘the fact’ that there is no directly or completely ‘determining’ from macro to micro level, from school policy making to the teachers and learners action, from outside the world to the inner world of the classroom. The critical point is that in late modernity the connections and the relationships between levels, parties, outside/inside etc. are fare more complex.

I think I have made my point clear by now. If we want to investigate the relation between macro, mezo and micro levels and the relation between the political context and the inner world of education we need approaches from long term fieldwork as well as we need time and focus on practical complexity in the process.

The relation between macro and micro levels is highly complex. But at one point it seems that policy making and herby the political context is getting clearer and stronger, more demanding and that the political discourse are going into details as never before. Referring to the Danish and Scandinavian development since the 1990th you can point at reforms and political programs at the political macro-levels. Next you can point at the program for school development and quality enhancing at the institutional mezo level, and next you can point at the micro-level and the teaching and learning practice. If the political program and its practical implementation are in focus we can reflect the new tendencies as a higher degree of determination and in connection the falling degree of relatively autonomy. But we can not deny that the political program and hereby the macro level is setting the agenda. There is nothing hidden and at all levels you can see and hear the discourse of the political program.

Let me go back to my earlier fieldworks to exemplify consequences for methodological demands and potentials in renewing the classic approaches. The examples from my work in the 1980th refers to the long stay, discovering ‘the whole process of implementation’ and the meaning of the institutional mezo levels and organizational culture


The field of practice – the process of implementation

The fieldworks from the 1980th were conducted at a Danish reform university organized along project-lines. My main research tool was the new progressive educational culture and its consequences for the teaching and learning practice. My answer to the question of the long stay was pure and simple: I moved in, and the one year program The Basic Education Program could be followed from start to finish. I participated in the whole program and its activities, from the teachers planning work on beforehand, to the first ‘Welcoming’ and through the course steps and phases to the official end and final ‘Examination’. Through day to day observations I was able to study the educational settings, the project learning culture and the ongoing activities as a living, dynamic field of practice (Borgnakke 1996b, Vol.1).

My fieldwork and long stay was a very strong concept to cover the field of practice and to go into close up analysis of the processes grounded at the micro-level. Next the potentials are the empirical benefit from this grounding by shifting the point of view from macro, mezo and micro levels. Let me give an example recalling that concepts of ‘the new project learning culture’ are characterized and constructed in practice at all levels by shifting between levels.

My field work documented how reforms and modernized educational culture is marked of a political battle fight between the traditional educational organization and the alternative, related to the reform pedagogical ideas. When you are in the field you can see and hear the battle-fight in the concrete manner. In empirical sense you can confirm the argument: Culture is not something a school (or a group within the system) have, rather what the school ‘is’ at what it ‘means’, ‘do’ and express as ‘Our school’. A school can express itself, but also bring the whole system - the traditional system or the whole idea of an alternative in mind. In my case the University expressed itself as THE new modern alternative. ‘The whole institution’ was organized according to ideas of project learning. The project organization had an impact on architecture and the interior, on the laws, on curricula, on the organization of departments, on scientific subjects, on teachers and students, on lectures, teaching, training and learning.

In all these respects I could observe the modernized university culture rooted in reform pedagogical ideas and constructive critique - dating back to concepts from John Dewey and renewed several times, for an example by concepts from critical theory. But most of all I could observe the interplay between the institutional mezo level and the micro level and the construction of the educational culture and identity. To discover the matter of identity on the institutional mezo level was an important part of the fieldwork. Referring to observations, interviews and material collection at both mezo and micro levels I could widen up the ethnographic approaches to be what we to day recognize as organizational ethnography.

Following that interest means that the researcher comes close to the question of HOW are the organization and the professionals doing ‘The Idea - The Vision - The Mission’. In this case the empirical materials document how the professional teams (from leaders, teachers to students) are doing ideas and plans and how they transform and perform in practice. At all institutional levels there are living life and practice to observe and important experiences, narratives and texts to collect. Herby the practical discourse and conflicts is coming in sight related to the identity as the progressive alternative and a strategy for change.


The point is that ethnography covering the interplay between mezo and micro levels is able to identify issues both related to the intentional and factual aspects, as well as various institutional levels, professional actors and different phases in what we in broader sense can call the whole process of implementation.

Let me sum up by a map and an overview to the followed process.



(Borgnakke 1996b)


The map illustrates how I dealt with the process first by mapping the field, second by doing the empirical analysis as a reconstruction of the journey from ‘Ideas’ to ‘Praxis’. The challenge here was to develop a strategy for analysis coping with the process of implementation. I called the strategy process analysis prepared for close up analysis of the discourse, the discursive practice, the social cultural context and of text in context. To reconstruct the process from the starting point means focus on ideas vision and plans situated in the institution, the law, the curriculum. The point is that both the process and the discourse are represented by the range of official texts. Then the teachers and the students and their discursive practice witness how ideas and plans are to be realized as projects produced and constructed in the academic learning context. To succeed with the empirical analysis I have fieldnotes from my observations of course. Further I have the needed materials and artifacts with the huge data-collection referring to all possible combinations of ‘text in context’. But even so there will be a special challenge related to the interplay between the macro, mezo and micro level and the process of learning. We are not only dealing with series of learning activities, series of texts and products from the learners. We are also dealing with the learner's reflections on their own doing.

What I on the map call the cardinal point of the process of learning (se further Borgnakke 1999) is therefore observed as the teacher’s and the learner’s reflections on their journey and interpretations of ideas and principles, the plan, norm, values, curricula, the planes, their own ideas, competencies and doing. This means that the process of learning both refers to the student’s process of project learning, to the institution as a learning organization and to the whole process of implementation. In terms of strategies for the process analysis the challenge was to combine the critical discourse analysis referring to the political macro level and the institutional mezo level, with close up analysis of the actual learning practice and context (Borgnakke 1996b vol. 2).

The strength with the classic approach and fieldwork as the long stay was to cover the whole process of implementation and discover the interplay between mezo and micro levels. With this as a broad and deep empirical background my research project from the 1990th will exemplify the strength in what we called intensive fieldwork or comparative case studies with the focus on different learning context (see the map annex 1). At the same time the examples from the 1990th exemplify how we as research teams are getting involved in the political process of pedagogical development, quality enhancing and evaluation.
The comparative case study - between different learning contexts

This type of intensive field study and comparative case study was done within a ‘Project quality development of teaching’ in the beginning of 1990th (Borgnakke 2005). The project was carried out as development work in three selected academic environments in the technical, the humanistic and the social science faculties, respectively. Projects from the Mechanical Engineering Program at the Technical University of Denmark (DTH) and from Marketing Economics at the Copenhagen Business School (HHK) are included in the case.

During the project I followed the different development work as different cases, where I concentrated the case study on the relation between the academic learning context and the teaching and learning strategies. Through observation, conversation and interviews with teacher and students I followed the varied teaching forms and learning strategies involved: From the classic lecture, the modern classroom-setting, to the late modern project work: the business and profession oriented project work. Furthermore I followed the characteristic settings and situations from one scientific area to the next, starting with the technical area, continuing with the humanistic area and ended with the social and business science area. On this background I could grasp the issues, connected to the institutional tradition for teaching and learning and compare the indeed very different culture and learning context. At the same time a common issues became clearer as the dilemma of The Mass-University: on one hand highly influenced by conventional school tradition and teacher/pupil relations. On the other hand attempt to follow demands and expectations of the survival of classic university tradition and research based teaching, oriented at the students as ‘researcher in spe’ or ‘the future professional’. This dilemma almost took character of the late modern university conflict.

The observations and the spontaneous talks and interviews have strong identifications of the teachers and the learners own representation (and interpretation) of the conflict and the question of learning strategies. Further more the comparative case study has special forces according to identification and documentation of a) the diversity in learning strategies, b) the educational cultures impact on teaching and learning, c) the learning contexts influence on learning subject, knowledge and learning interests.

What is of interest here, according to the differently scientific cultures and learning strategies, is that the dilemma tackling seem to be grounded in respectively humanistic, technical, and business approaches to education and learning. The common pedagogical issues and the reflection on learning as well were dived in three. The case analysis could therefore give the documentation for the importance of contextualizing similar with the concepts from Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) about situated learning and community of practice. In addition the analysis shows the important nuance that contextualizing is closely related to the scientific subject matter. And as I above recalled the concept of culture being characterized and constructed at all levels and in between levels, ‘the scientific subject matter’ is characterized and constructed both at the political macro level, the institutional mezo level (the faculty) and the micro-level: the learning practice. For the comparative case analysis the empirical point then was that ‘the common pedagogical issues’ and reflections on academic learning were dived in three different versions closely related to the three different learning contexts.
On a deeper level, and when it comes to the matter of being educated through teaching and learning in the scientific subject, we even need to express the point in a habermasian way. Related to what in German is called the different ‘erkentniss interessen’ (Habermas 1968) the pedagogical reflection and goals given for the development work, or the course, was influenced of the technical, humanistic and social scientific knowledge interests. According to the process of learning I recognized the same tendencies. What of interest here is the nuance but also the new perspective when you look at it from the learner’s point of view. As learners the student seems to be driven by the strongest dimension in the learning context, but also by the two weaker. So it is a kind of shifting between ‘to master a technique’, ‘to understand’ (verstehen) and ‘to act and change’, where the learners themselves mentioning how and when which dimension is too strong.

The strength with the comparative case studies was to develop three cases of academic learning discovering the meaning of the interplay levels, the scientific subject matter and the learning context. With this as an addition to the empirical background my next and last example related to research project from the 2000th will show how fieldwork and case studies are getting involved in the political process of reform, organizational development and innovation. The point is that we as research teams will be confronted directly the question of education and learning in late modernity and with the new large of scale. And the new common case is Schools in changing


The new case: Schools in changing

Let me start recalling that my first case studies on Schools in changing were connected to one of the biggest program of development in the Danish school during the 1990th. As a group of evaluative researcher we took part in one of the program theme, namely The School of the Future - The Universal School. Our theme concerned 14 chosen "School project", which taken together represented city and countryside schools, large and small schools, private and public schools. One of the fourteenth projects implied a whole school community (Borgnakke 2005).

Only research teams can do research or evaluation of such amounts of schools, levels and parties. And both the new large of scale and the teamwork is an empiric challenge for case studies. Further more my current case studies on the so called IT- upper secondary schools are related to the process of reforms taking place during the 2000th (Borgnakke 2007). The starting point for Upper Secondary Schools in Changing was a political program in 1999. The absolute center was the reform (2005) with the pioneers starting the practical process of implementation. The ending point, so fare, is 2009, meaning that the process of implementation directed by the political and institutional macro and mezo level at least must be regarded as ten years or a decade.

The empirical soundboard for the case study is therefore both ‘the new large of scale’ ‘the whole process of implementation’ and the diversity we are facing. It is a complicated matter of determination/autonomy. The new large of scale means, that the political program is aimed at a whole sector. The process of implementation means an ongoing political and professional power related interplay between all levels, institutions and actors. As researchers we are therefore dealing with national/international policy making, the reformed sector, community-systems, many different schools and professionals strategies for implementation of reforms and innovative projects. Furthermore, according to each single school, there are the different levels and parties to cover. At least my three divided ‘leader-level’, ‘teacher/teacher level’ (teachers as colleagues) and a practical level for ‘ongoing teaching and interaction between teacher and students’. In connection to the case study on the profiled schools in a new ICT and media culture needs to benefit from the classic analysis of organizational culture from Edgar Schein (2004) referring to the level for ”Artifacts”, ”Espoused Values”, and ”Basis Underlying Assumptions”. Besides should both the particular teacher (teacher teams) and groups of students be covered with a focus on social cultural background, gender and ethnicity.

As stressed above only research teams can cover the new large of scale and meet the challenge analyzing the practical impact of an ambitious development program for a sector in changing. Still, the research team can not go through the phases of covering - and discovering - without the closer contact to the field doing observations, interview and material collections. At this point the new case adds a new dimension to the field work, namely the ongoing discussions among professionals. In my actual case study at the IT schools the reform and the whole process of implementation is THE ongoing discussion among leader teams and teacher teams. Therefore also the professional actors participate in the discussion about which school projects, classes and groups (or issues) the case study fruit fully could bring into focus. The point - for empirical and evaluative research - is firstly that research is in a dialog with professionals from the field of practice in all phases. Secondly that the fields own reflections become an important part of the common process, afterwards an important part of the empirical materials. This type of evaluative research is fruit fully connected to the schools own strategy for innovation and evaluation, and created in a way a strategy for ‘dialogical research’ with integrated ‘self-evaluation’ from the schools and parties involved.

From here we go directly back to the fieldwork in classic sense and recall the basic needs for time, and now it is time to analyze and reflect the process of implementation, the organization and the institutional levels, the culture and the context, the scientific subject matter and the matter of professional identity. But while we as researchers are reflective doing analysis, reports etc. there is a risk that the political agenda are moving on to new themes, projects etc. In this sense the project of research are in risk for being left behind. But being left behind can be the challenge we need, for example to insist of the necessity of reflection on the scientific impact of ethnography to strengthen the empirical education research. Let me summarize the challenge and the perspectives


The challenge and the perspectives

Research strategies related to classic ethnographic approaches are challenged during the concrete process of research. Herby the ethnographic approaches are provoked to develop and in my case be developed related to the ongoing national and international research projects. In these projects data collections are challenged to cover both the macro, mezo and micro levels and challenged by doing fieldwork in the different learning context related to upper secondary school as well as to programs at the university and at teacher training college. In terms of research strategy the challenge is to combine material/product collection, interviews and methods of observation referring directly to each of the three organisational levels:




  • The level of management (organisational materials, interview with leader team, special focus on IT-based strategies and innovation)

  • The level of professional co-workers, teacher/teacher relations (materials about concrete projects and development work, interviews with associated groups of teachers. Development of web based project portals for sharing knowledge and experiences)

  • The level of practical learning, teacher/student relations, student/student relations (interviews with students groups, observation of the process on innovation, project learning and performance both in the scholastic formal and non-formal learning context)

The changing levels, system and organisational perspectives, as well as shifts between the points of view of teachers and students, shifts between formal/non-formal learning and scholastic culture/youth culture, is the challenge.

The challenge can be examined firstly in terms of developing new theoretical and empirical concepts about how the field, its activities and actors are involved. Secondly the challenge can be examined in terms of bridge building for example between education research and research in media, IT and youth culture. The concept of youth culture, school culture, formal and non-formal learning will herby be challenged in the whole spectrum from the classic studies and cases (Willis 1977, Hebdige 1979) to the late modern case: The Digital Youth (Ito 2008, Buckingham 2008, Drotner 2009). The current case studies have further more demonstrated the importance of an innovative strategy experimenting with the new technologies. Here, the internet, websites, project portals, environments of evaluation and learning, is both a challenge and tools research-wise and in terms of the professional and learning-oriented practice (Borgnakke 2007, 2008, 2010).
In order to develop the various dimensions for research projects, the projects are related to program and research networks with senior researchers and Ph.D.-students getting involved with ‘sub-projects’ over a couple of years. Combined with the project “Transitions - Between the Scholastic, the Professional and the Academic Learning Contexts” there will be sub-projects focussing on transitional issues connected to gender, ethnicity or connected to development work in the different learning context.

The perspectives for the methodology seems to be the new large of scale in terms of generating focused and problem-conscious diagnosis and analyses of transitional issues in the three learning contexts. Further more the perspectives for the range of sub-projects concerned with empirical mapping is to produce both a relevant national overview and perform connections to Nordic, EU and international research projects. In the actual case the comparative dimension has been clarified and inspired for example by contact to research projects on Digital Youth from UC Berkeley, US California (Ito 2008).


The main perspectives for the coming research projects is to meet and explore the methodological challenges related to the strength of classic fieldwork and case studies but renewing the framework concerned of issues of special relevance from the circle of cultural-sociological studies, youth research, and research in ICT and new media in formal and non-formal learning contexts (Borgnakke 2010).
References

Borgnakke, K. (1996a) Gender, educational theory and educational research, in: Salling Olesen og Rasmussen, Eds., Theoretical Issues in Adult Education, Roskilde University Press.

Borgnakke, K. (1996b) Educational field research (vol.1), The methodology of process analysis (vol.2), Pædagogisk Feltforskning og Procesanalytisk metodologi, Borgnakke 1996, Danish University Press.

Borgnakke, K. (1999) Group work and learning processes - viewed practically and analytically, Project Studies - a late modern university reform? Salling Olesen & Højgaard Jensen (eds.) Roskilde University Press.

Borgnakke, K. (2004a) Etnografiske studier i pædagogik og læring – en senmoderne udfordring, i Et analytisk blik på senmodernitetens gymnasium, Borgnakke (ed) Gymnasiepædagogik nr. 47, DIG, Syddansk Universitet.

Borgnakke, K. (2004b): Ethnographic Studies and Analysis of a Recurrent Theme: “learning by doing”, European Educational Research Journal, Theme: Ethnography of Education in a European Educational Researcher Perspective, Vol.3, No.3, www.wwwords.co.uk/EERJ.

Borgnakke, K. (2005): Læringsdiskurser og praktikker, Akademisk Forlag.

Borgnakke, K. (2006): New learning strategies in the upper secondary school: The Danish fieldwork in IT classes, B. Jeffrey (ed.), Creative Learning Practices: European Experiences, the Tufnell Press. London, pp. 109 -126.

Borgnakke, K. (2007) (ed.): Nye læringsstrategier i de gymnasiale uddannelser - Casestudier i IT-klasser og projektarbejde, DIG/Syddansk Universitet.

Borgnakke, K. (2008): Projektportalen/evalueringsportalen (Project IT-based strategies for learning and evaluation), University of Copenhagen http://workingprogress.cms.hum.ku.dk

Borgnakke, K. (2010) Projektportalen ITAKA (IT & Learning in Academia) University of Copenhagen: http://pur.mef.ku.dk/itaka/  and www.eresearch.ku.dk

Brewer, J.D. (2000) Ethnography, Buckingham, Open University Press.

Buckingham, D. (2008) (ed) Youth, Identity and Digital Media Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Drotner, K. m.fl. (2009) Digitale læringsressourcer i folkeskolen og i de gymnasiale ungdomsuddannelser, Dream projektet, Syddansk Universitet www.dream.dk

Eisenhart, M. (2001) Educational Ethnography Past, Present, and Future: Ideas to Think With, Educational Researcher, Vol. 30. no 8.p.16 - 27.

Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman

Fairclough, N. (2005) Discourse in processes of social change: ‘Transition’ in Central and Eastern Europe, B.A.S. vol XI. 2005.

Habermas, J. (1968) Technik und Wisssenshaft als “ideology”, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.

Hammersley & Atkinson (2005) Ethnography. Principles in Practice. London and New York: Routledge.

Hebdige, D. (1979) Subculture - the meaning of style, Methuen & Co. Ltd.

Higher Education Close Up 5 (2010) Think pieces: Unreflective Practice? Case Study and the Problem of Theoretical Inference, by Martyn Hammersley, and Wicked Issues in Situating Theory in Close Up Research, by Paul Trowler, conference website: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/events/hecu5/index.htm

Ito, Mizuko et al (2008): Living and Learning with new media: Summery of findings from the Digital Youth Project, MacArthur Foundation Report, http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-WhitePaper.pdf

Jeffrey, B. (2006): (ed.) Creative Learning Practices: European Experiences, the Tufnell Press.

Kvale, S. (1997) InterViews, An introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing, London, Sage publications.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge University Press.

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific, New York, E.P. Dutton.

Schein, E. (2004) Organizational culture and leadership, Joysey Bassey-Bass

Spindler, G. D., red. (1987) Education and cultural process, anthropological approaches, Waveland Press.

Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labor, Farnborough: Saxon House.

Willis, P. (2000). The Ethnographic Imagination. Cambridge, Polity Press.



Woods, P. (1996) Researching the Art of Teaching, London: Routledge.
Annex 1: The intensive fieldwork between classic and renewed models
(Borgnakke 2004)





Yüklə 97 Kb.

Dostları ilə paylaş:




Verilənlər bazası müəlliflik hüququ ilə müdafiə olunur ©genderi.org 2024
rəhbərliyinə müraciət

    Ana səhifə