Ethnography and Participation Observation in Educational Context

What is Ethnography
The Ethnographic method involves the corresponding management on participant observation. In practical term, Ethnography means to forms of social research which have following features:
· a strong articulation on investigating on the nature of special social phenomena rather than testing prepared hypotheses.
· Working and dealing with unstructured data which is a data that have not been formed at the point of data collection.
· usually focuses on one case or phenomena at a time
· Further, ethnography is an inter-subjective for qualitative research through which the relationships of researcher and researched, insider and outsider, self and other, body and environment and field and home are negotiated.
Multicultural education
One of the considerations is the learning of ethnic. “Multicultural education provides students with knowledge of their social world within the context of power, oppression, and domination through a situated curriculum that does not remove student experience from the classroom”. By learning about multiculturalism, students can gain insight into the background of classmates and learn new knowledge. Not just answering the questions but also listening to other students’ answers can help with their learning. This can be called indirect learning. Different to the direct learning from the paddle-pop stick but it has similar approach of sharing their own background and environment of their birth country especially in multicultural country like Australia and America.
What is participation observation
As for participant observation it is not a research technique but a mode of being- in- the -world characteristic of researchers. Both the ethnography and participant observation have been established to perform and present a uniquely humanistic, interpretive approach, as opposed to supposedly “scientific” and “positivist” positions.
“Participation implies emotional involvement: observation requires detachment. It is a strain to try to sympathise with others and at the same time strive for scientific objectivity.”
Why Ethnography and Participation Observation together
* The Participant observation is appropriate for a wide range of scholarly problems and is proper way to use with children's existence. This focuses on interaction with children and meaning viewed from participant's viewpoint in everyday life situations and settings.
* This generate practical and theoretical truths formulated like the interpretative theories.
* This practice involves a flexible, open-ended, opportunistic process and logic of inquiry through which what is studied constantly is subject to redefinition based on field experience and observation of children.
* In many fields of teaching, direct observation and experience are primary sources and methods of data collection, but on top of that the researcher also may conduct interviews, collect documents and use other methods of gathering information on the side.
Quantitative form
Collecting a standardised set of data is mostly in quantitative form, from relatively small samples of subjects. This participant observation is a sampling technique which enable the researcher to create these findings to larger populations, like experiments. Also survey research is useful for testing theories and providing explanations.

The methodology of participant observation focuses to provide practical and theoretical truths about human existence.
Theories allow a perspective, a way of seeing and an interpretation aimed at understanding some phenomenon.
The concepts, generalisation and interpretations skills used in the project inspired through participant observation which is useful for making practical decisions.
The methodology of participant observation stresses a 'logic of discovery', which a process aimed at stir up concepts, generalisations and theories.
The process of practice requires the researcher to define the problem of study and be constantly open to its redefinition based on information collected from working with children in the field.

The Methodology of participant observation
From the study by Danny “The methodology of Participant observation”, there are 7 basic features to the Participant Observation:
1. a special interest in human meaning and interaction as viewed from the perspective of people who are insiders or members of situations and settings;
2. location in the here and now of everyday life situations and settings as the foundation of inquiry and method;
3. a form of theory and theorising stressing interpretation and understanding of existence of children;
4. as mentioned before, the logic and process of inquiry that is open-ended, flexible, opportunistic, and requires constant redefinition of what is problematic;
5. an in-depth, qualitative, case study approach and design;
6. the performance of a participant role or roles that involves establishing and maintaining relationships with natives in the field; and
7. the use of direct observation along with other methods of gathering information.

In this participant observation research, ethnographers attempt to be both emotionally engaged participants and coolly dispassionate observers of the lives of the children.
When designing this observation strategy, to accomplish this form of understanding children, it is necessary to undertake an engaged period of fieldwork.
Dylan William's Class Experiment
The paddle-pop stick innovation by expert professor Dylan William received lots of attention in America. With his teaching strategies, he spent a whole one term in Year 8 class so that he can prove that his educational system can improve the quality of children's education. This new approach of using paddle-pop stick to select students in random to answer the question in class hours instead of putting hand up and picking was not smooth process. Some students who are willing to answer and have higher ability was not responding well to the new rule. But I believe there’s cons and pros in Dylan William’s experiment. Overall, this is student participatory experiment which is very relevant to Ethnography and participatory observation.
Through his participatory observation experiment he was able to found out that there are many modifiable methods in class to get students’ attention. As already introduced by the clip by Dylan William, there are two strategies that was attractive. The green, yellow, red cups which allows the teachers to know immediately the understanding process of the students. It can help with students with less understanding by seeking for red or yellow cups on the table. Another strategy was giving out the small white boards to the individuals to write their answers. It’s a quick way to know the answers of students at once. This can be used instead of using devices in the class which can distract some students. This close and direct experiment is very accurate and reliable in education advancement.
Dylan William wanted to give same opportunity to every student. Of course, students with knowledgeable parents have more privilege than the students from poor country and single parent. The research from Higginbotham, “Getting all students to listen”, says, “This innovative teaching may be applauded… Privileged students are not by any means a monolithic group, because many may welcome the opportunity to explore major sources of inequality in our society.” Being privileged and not privileged can affect individuals but in school educators needs to be fair to every student. In the second episode of the “The classroom experiment”, Dylan William invited the parents to participate in the class as same as their daughters and sons. This can solve the inequality viewpoints when students look at each other.
Both teachers’ and students’ behaviour are important in class. “As far as the behaviour of children is concerned, the manner in which a teacher goes about carrying through an official format is more significant than the format itself. Group alerting is significantly related to children's behaviour.” When students were told to come early in the morning to exercise, both teacher and students’ behaviour were not great. There were many students who were grumbling and was not happy. And because of their attitudes the teacher was not happy, she had to tell them that she also had to wake up extra early to prepare the class and plan the exercise routine in the morning before the class. Hence, individual’s behaviour is influential to others in school very quickly. This is why observing students attitude in real life is most accurate way to justify what is the real obstacle for students in class.
Student Welfare Policy, 1996
The new learning system introduced by Dylan William is a unique way of getting the attention from students. Every student in the class can concentrate and feel the thrill of getting picked at random or not. This results the students to prepare and have the answer ready. But first it is important to identify whether this approach is valuable, so the educators can utilise the ‘Student Welfare Policy’. Which is the New South Wales public education system to provide quality and enriched education for all the public-school students. Through the paddle-pop stick learning method, “Students will develop an understanding of themselves as well as skills for positive, socially responsible participation”. By trying to answer at random even with no answer in mind can teach the student to comprehend and think deeply. Moreover, every student will feel valued as learner. Usually in class, students who put their hands have correct answer but people who seats at the back and not paying attention have no answer to tell. So, by implying this paddle-pop stick learning, every student can feel valued and feel proud when they answer even with force. Through this skill, “Given their social nature, classrooms provide a critical context for teaching social skills such as communication and respect for each others.” Learning to respect each other in the school is important. Only the participatory observation experiment can result to better performance of students in class than indirect and assumption of students behaviours.
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association, introduced the top twenty principles from psychology for preschool and k-12 teaching and learning. Out of twenty principles, the most outstanding principles were six and twelve. The principles six is “Clear, explanatory and timely feedback to students is important for learning.” Which is very important, especially the giving the timely feedback. In Dylan William’s research, he assessed students to attitudes by changing the way of giving back the result. Instead of marking the students’ work with mark and numbers he asked the teachers to give them feedback and comments. This encouraged students to know their weaknesses and how to improve. So, this principle six corresponds to the Dylan William’s intervention.
Furthermore, the principle twelve, “Setting goals that are short term(proximal), specific and moderately challenging enhances motivation more than establishing goals that are long term (distal), general and overly challenging”. Likewise, American Psychological Association have parallel opinion with challenging students to Dylan William. Dylan William focused on challenging every student to participate in the class, the approaches to forcefully ask the students to answer the questions and actively show their learning statues is challenging the students to appeal the truth. With this learning habit, students can “become intermediate risk takers (not aspiring too low or too high), which is one of the most important characteristics of achievement-oriented individuals.” Both teachers and students can see the result in short term. Which can be incorporated to any Ethnography and participatory observation as the pillar of the principles.
Summary
As we deal with children research, this ethnographic project results from a series of encounters, and participation. The ethnographers need to pay attention to everyday geographies so they can become familiar with how social spaces are constituted in various settings. Then the ethnographers can have better understanding of lived, sensed, experienced, and emotional worlds. In this case interviews cannot constitute ethnography, because in many situations, interviewees cannot report upon what the participant ‘do’ for and ‘doing’ are often in-articulated practices. Sometimes even when we try to understand the implicit rules of culture norms, the ethnographers may break other rules and find that they have acted inappropriately.
Question to think before closing the tab
If you could critically think of your past years in the educational fields, will this ethnography and participant observations might have created better learning environment and a tool for you as student to be closer with the teachers and friends you came across?

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