CLASSROOM ETHNOGRAPHY IN THE TURKISH CONTEXT
Türk Bağlamında Sınıf Etnografyası

Author : Ömer Gökhan ULUM
Number of pages : 57-67

Abstract

Ethnography, as an approach, was primarily utilized by cultural anthropologists to investigate the culture of a community. Classroom ethnography is an approach to the study of classroom settings. Ethnographic studies also analyze motivational structures and dimensions of learning. Prominently, if an ethnographic account is centralized on an individual’s behaviors, then the individual is naturally considered the sample of the referred group. Ethnographers deal with the community because it is the people of a community who are monitored, interviewed, and with whom the ethnographer fosters personal ties. Ethnographic studies focus on groups rather than individuals as cultural behaviors are the shared behaviors of a group. For instance, an ethnographer observing a language classroom is expected to pinpoint to the function of classroom coordination in learners’ attaining language input, rather than focusing on personal language-learning problems because motivation plays an important role in helping learners achieve their goals. Ethnography is related to the inquiry of other people, not ourselves. Further, ethnography is based on participant-observation in the related context rather than being experimental. Ethnography is a kind of qualitative method employed to examine educational matters which cannot be efficiently inspected by experimental studies or other sorts of quantitative methods. Ethnographers deal with the community because it is the people of a community who are monitored, interviewed, and with whom the ethnographer fosters personal ties. Ethnographic studies focus on groups rather than individuals as cultural behaviors are the shared behaviors of a group. Considering all these in mind, this paper inquires the ethnography of a classroom from a first-person perspective. The findings of the study suggest that the consequence of the boost in technology and social media, as well as globalization formed a common classroom culture which may be encountered all around the world.

Keywords

Classroom ethnography, culture, ethnography, ethnographers

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