Publication details
Jak se studenti učitelství učí pracovat s žákovskou diverzitou? Využití vícemístné etnografie ve výzkumu diverzity v pregraduální učitelské přípravě
| Title in English | How do Pre-service Teachers Learn do Address Student Diversity? Multi-sited Ethnography in Research on Pregradual Teacher Education |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In this chapter I introduce the methodological approach of multi -sited ethnography which emphasizes the simultaneous study of multiple environments relevant for the researched phenomenon in contrast with the more traditional conception of ethnographic paradigm which stresses participant observation of a group of individuals in one bounded locality. I illustrate its application in a research project focused on the ways pre -service teachers learn to address student diversity in their teacher training programme and discuss its main methodological advantages as well as difficulties we faced while conducting team ethnography.During our research experience, three main methodological issues emerged: 1) how to analyse an extensive and diverse data corpus and prepare the project outputs in time; 2) how to cope with the restrictions introduced in relation with the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak which significantly complicated our fieldwork; and 3) how to ensure the coordination of doing ethnography in team. Firstly, I explain that to triangulate the data collected by six researchers across multiple settings using different data collection techniques, it is important to analyze the whole data corpus not along the individual cases (i.e., pre -service teachers), but across them. Besides, it is important to divide the analysis of data collected in different stages of conducting fieldwork into several phases to ensure that project outputs are finished in time. Secondly, I explain why involving virtual environments into our fieldwork with regard to the Covid-19 restrictions and the resulting distant form of teaching at universities as well as at lower -secondary schools did not compromise methodological imperatives of multi -sited ethnography. On the other hand, it was in line with its main principle of “following people” as they move across different places. Thus, the extension of original multi -sited ethnographical environments into virtual space enabled us to contrast pre -service teachers’ thinking and practices as experienced in the same contexts, but different modes. Thirdly, I discuss positive aspects of team ethnography, such as the possibility to collect extensive data in diverse settings and distribute the work among individual researchers to enhance trustworthiness of the main findings, as well as challenges it can bring up during the whole research process: such as how to write, share and analyze fieldnotes among several researchers; how to keep high team confidence and culture as well as researchers’ self -discipline. Throughout the chapter, I demonstrate the usage of the Atlas.ti programme as a means of handling the presented issues. Lastly, I summarize the lessons learned from this multi -sited ethnography project and discuss some wider implications of our experience for the field of (not only) education research such as inclusion of virtual communities in the research where the digital aspects of education are not the main focus; or re -thinking the quality and depth of team collaboration not only in ethnographic research projects. |
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