Classroom Ethnography

Classroom ethnography is a principled approach to the study of classroom life grounded in cultural, social, and linguistic anthropology. It involves an iterative and responsive engagement with the dialectics of theoretical framing, logic of inquiry, empirical fieldwork and data analysis, and the construction of a representation of classroom life. Heuristically, classroom ethnographies can be categorized as ethnographies of the classroom and ethnographies in the classroom, with the former contributing to the knowledge base in the social sciences and the latter contributing to the knowledge base in the field of education and to educational policy and practice. Among the goals of classroom ethnography have been countering deficit models of students from nondominant communities and the problematizing and redefining of key constructs associated with classroom life.

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Citing Literature

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology

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