Amateur Ethnography
In this assignment, the objective was students to be able to understand and experience how do a ethnographic research or ethnography study.
I really enjoy this as I have done a part of ethnographic study - called Grounded theory - found by Glaser in 1938. The paper is under the review and I will upload it once I get the feedback from the reviewers.
In this assignment the Learning Community I observed -
This community consist of women.
Aged around late 20s to elderly.
The community is to learn cooking, handwork and other small girly stuff.
Weekly meetings -
This group of women had weekly meeting or they call gatherings, most of them are wives of expats. Different cultures. they all share and made recopies of their own country. Sometimes something new which no one knew properly.
Who is expert and who is Novices..?
It is really interesting, expert and novice is depend on the plan. If they discuss to make a Turkish dish, the lady from Turkey obviously lead the team to make the dish. At the same time other ladies who know or tasted that dish will assist and inquire and chat about the ingredients and the method.
Even though there is expert each day depend on the meal, everyone work collaboratively. They are really cooking it, Cutting it chopping it.
Are there direct instructions ?
The community do not have rules and regulations, but they all discuss what to be cooked, mostly what saw is a pattern, They all roster with the country, or availability. Sometimes more enthusiastic girls will attract the community to make the recipe which they propose, but it is not seem to be all the time.
What kind of questions get asked? type of interactions ?
Questions during the cooking time mainly related to the ingredients. for example if they are making a Italian dish, they were talking about where can they buy that ingredient, these questions are very important as they live in other country where Italian ingredients are not so easy to find, so the community is sharing valuable information.
Beyond that community members are generous they sometime share ingredients which they brought from their own countries.
Learning Theory behind the community -
I observed several theories which are ,
" Constuctinism" and " Teaching for Understanding" " Inquiry base learning" and finally "project base learning"
Constructnism is because they connect with other ladies and open to share the experience, they create their learning experience with the dish they make and the feedback they get is a really good example of active learning.
Teaching for understanding - is a new theory I learnt from week 2 of the 11.123X brought by Harvard professor Davis Perkins - ( Perkins, D. N. (2008). Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching can Transform Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass).
As the theory explains this learning experience is sorrowed with what they need to learn in the end than covering curricular.
Inquiry base learning - is because they were all willing to share the knowledge as per inquiries of the members. and project base as each individual has a role to play. Their expertise counted in every sessions.
My thoughts about this experience -
This experience is really a chance for me to see the world inside their community in their eye. Since I was not in part of it but observing from outside as a (Goast ;) ) I felt i was invisible...;) but it was really helpful as I was not influencing for any of their decisions behaviors as they were all part of the natural learning they conducted in each time.
Most important thing was the observation and memo taking. Sometimes I just took notes of what they did in the gathering , but when I was re-reading the notes at home I found many interesting points which I never thought at the site.
Such as when one occasion they were preparing beetroot salad, a Turkish Salad. One Indian lady said this salad should be much more tatety as a dipping than a salad. That statement is very special for me, they were re-creating or exploring the divergent thinking, because Indian lady has other expereience in the Beetroot salad. That is one of the AHA.... moment for me.
As the end...
I found this below youtube link uploaded by CrisFlipp, very interesting and explain the Ethnographic process in detail but very simple.
I really enjoy this as I have done a part of ethnographic study - called Grounded theory - found by Glaser in 1938. The paper is under the review and I will upload it once I get the feedback from the reviewers.
In this assignment the Learning Community I observed -
This community consist of women.
Aged around late 20s to elderly.
The community is to learn cooking, handwork and other small girly stuff.
Weekly meetings -
This group of women had weekly meeting or they call gatherings, most of them are wives of expats. Different cultures. they all share and made recopies of their own country. Sometimes something new which no one knew properly.
Who is expert and who is Novices..?
It is really interesting, expert and novice is depend on the plan. If they discuss to make a Turkish dish, the lady from Turkey obviously lead the team to make the dish. At the same time other ladies who know or tasted that dish will assist and inquire and chat about the ingredients and the method.
Even though there is expert each day depend on the meal, everyone work collaboratively. They are really cooking it, Cutting it chopping it.
Are there direct instructions ?
The community do not have rules and regulations, but they all discuss what to be cooked, mostly what saw is a pattern, They all roster with the country, or availability. Sometimes more enthusiastic girls will attract the community to make the recipe which they propose, but it is not seem to be all the time.
What kind of questions get asked? type of interactions ?
Questions during the cooking time mainly related to the ingredients. for example if they are making a Italian dish, they were talking about where can they buy that ingredient, these questions are very important as they live in other country where Italian ingredients are not so easy to find, so the community is sharing valuable information.
Beyond that community members are generous they sometime share ingredients which they brought from their own countries.
Learning Theory behind the community -
I observed several theories which are ,
" Constuctinism" and " Teaching for Understanding" " Inquiry base learning" and finally "project base learning"
Constructnism is because they connect with other ladies and open to share the experience, they create their learning experience with the dish they make and the feedback they get is a really good example of active learning.
Teaching for understanding - is a new theory I learnt from week 2 of the 11.123X brought by Harvard professor Davis Perkins - ( Perkins, D. N. (2008). Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching can Transform Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass).
As the theory explains this learning experience is sorrowed with what they need to learn in the end than covering curricular.
Inquiry base learning - is because they were all willing to share the knowledge as per inquiries of the members. and project base as each individual has a role to play. Their expertise counted in every sessions.
My thoughts about this experience -
This experience is really a chance for me to see the world inside their community in their eye. Since I was not in part of it but observing from outside as a (Goast ;) ) I felt i was invisible...;) but it was really helpful as I was not influencing for any of their decisions behaviors as they were all part of the natural learning they conducted in each time.
Most important thing was the observation and memo taking. Sometimes I just took notes of what they did in the gathering , but when I was re-reading the notes at home I found many interesting points which I never thought at the site.
Such as when one occasion they were preparing beetroot salad, a Turkish Salad. One Indian lady said this salad should be much more tatety as a dipping than a salad. That statement is very special for me, they were re-creating or exploring the divergent thinking, because Indian lady has other expereience in the Beetroot salad. That is one of the AHA.... moment for me.
As the end...
I found this below youtube link uploaded by CrisFlipp, very interesting and explain the Ethnographic process in detail but very simple.