Penn Ethnography & Education Forum 2003
Abstract
What are the prospective contributions of ethnographic, discourse, and multimedia -based research in education and communities to the study of educational change, systemic reform, and school and community renewal? In what directions can we expand our conceptual frameworks and research methods to respond more effectively to such challenges? Change takes place across the multiple timescales and along the multi-sited trajectories of our lives within dynamic systems of interdependent institutions and cultural practices at many levels of social organization. To understand educational change, we need richly detailed local accounts of how moments add up to lives and how actions do and do not produce sustainable institutional and cultural change. I would like to consider how we can frame such accounts so that they have value both in and across local contexts.
Presentation Slides in HTML
as PPT
Relevant Papers and Presentations on Dynamics and Education: Timescales,
traversals, and multi-level dynamics
"Across
the Scales of Time: Artifacts, Activities, and Meanings in Ecosocial Systems"
Mind, Culture, and Activity 7 (4): 273-290. 2000.
“Language
development and identity: multiple timescales in the social ecology of
learning.” In C. Kramsch, Ed. Language Acquisition and Language Socialization.
London: Continuum. pp 68 – 87. 2002.
“Discursive
technologies and the social organization of meaning.” Folia Linguistica 35
(1-2): 79 -96. [Special issue: "Critical Discourse Analysis and
Cognition", R. Wodak, issue editor]. 2002.
“Becoming the
Village: Education across Lives” In G. Wells and G. Claxton, Eds. Learning
for Life in the 21st Century: Sociocultural Perspectives on The
Future of Education. London: Blackwell. pp. 34-45. 2002.
"Opening Up Closure: Semiotics Across Scales."
In J. Chandler and G. van de Vijver, Eds. Closure: Emergent Organizations and
their Dynamics (Volume 901: Annals of the NYAS). New York: New York Academy
of Science Press. pp. 100-111. March, 2000.
"Material Sign Processes and Ecosocial
Organization." In P.B. Andersen, C. Emmeche, and N.O. Finnemann-Nielsen, Eds.
Downward Causation: Self-organization in Biology, Psychology, and Society.
Aarhus University Press (Denmark). pp. 181-213. 2000.
"The Long and the Short of It: Comments on
multiple timescale studies of human activity." Journal of the Learning
Sciences 10 (1-2): 193-202. 2000.
Other Useful References
Margaret Eisenhart on issues in educational ethnography, including multi-site ethnography:
Eisenhart, Margaret. 2001. Educational Ethnography Past, Present, and Future: Ideas to Think With. Educational Researcher, Vol. 30. No. 8, pp. 16–27 . [Available at
www.aera.net/pubs/er/pdf/vol30_08/AERA300804.pdf ]
Elizabeth Moje's work as an example of multi-site ethnography, following the actors and their literacy practices outside school:
Young, J.P., Dillon, D. R., & Moje, E. B. (2002). Shape-shifting portfolio youth: millennials, literacies, and the game of life. In D. E. Alvermann, (Ed.), Youth's multiliteracies in a digital world (pp. 114-131). New York: Peter Lang.
The EthnograFeast at UC Berkeley Sept 2002, papers: http://cue.berkeley.edu/
Ulf Hannerz on multi-site ethnography: Ulf Hannerz (Stockholm University): "Being There... and There... and There! Reflections on Multisite Ethnography"
Jean Comaroff: de-localization, de-parochialization of ethnographic research: Jean Comaroff (University of Chicago): "Ethnography on an Awkward Scale: A View from the South-African Postcolony"
Kevin Leander on chronotopes and education:
Dissertation: Classroom Discourse, Identity, and the Production of Social Space, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1999.
Leander, K.M. (2002). Silencing in classroom interaction: Producing and relating social spaces. Discourse Processes, 34, 193-235.
Situated literacies, digital practices, and the constitution of space-time. Paper presented at the National Reading Conference 52nd Annual Meeting, Miami. (2002).
Leander, K. M. (in press). Polycontextual construction zones Mapping the expansion of schooled space and identity. Mind, Culture, and Activity. Available at http//www.vanderbilt.edu/litspace/polycontext.pdf
George Kampis on causal depth, niche production in evolutive systems: http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/
A Causal Model of Evolution -- http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/SEAL02/A_Causal_Model_of_Evolution.htm
Towards an Evolutionary Technology -- http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~g-kampis/EvoTech/Towards.html