Using Ethnographic Approaches to Co-Construct Strategies for Success With Students With Dyslexia: A Project With Tertiary Students in Aotearoa, New Zealand

Ethnography

Ethnography has been around for a very long time, particularly as practiced by cultural anthropologists, but despite the extensive history there remains disputed understandings and definitions within Social Sciences ranging across “the study of culture”, “understanding another way of life from the native (sic) point of view”, “entering a natural setting to do field research”, to “the written up reporting of such work” (Berg & Lune, 2012, p. 196).

Crouser (2005, p. 122) explicitly raises the difficulties traditional ethnographic methods have posed in disability research suggesting that ethnography is a very useful but underutilized if not largely ignored tool for researchers in disability, perhaps because “while disability communities would seem an ideal site for ethnographic investigation, disabled people, long subjected both to marginalization and objectifying examination, may resent and resist”; the attention involved in traditional informant ethnography and he suggests that, “indeed disability ethnography faces some of the same ethical challenges as ethnography involving populations subjected to classic Western imperialism” (Crouser, 2005, p. 122).

Nevertheless the important point about the concept of ethnography regardless of these disputed territories Berg and Lune go on to identify is “that the practice places researchers in the midst of whatever it is they study” (Berg & Lune 2012, p. 197) and it is this aspect which is relevant for working in the field of inclusive education for tertiary students.

The New Ethnography

More recently, the traditional approaches associated with ethnography have been developed, refined, advanced and stretched in new ways to enable full rich and deep representation from a participant as opposed to informant view and what is known as the new ethnography (Berg & Lune, 2012, p. 198) has emerged. In this new ethnography research strategies comprise a broadening of methods and methodologies of scope and size and complexity, including more micro-ethnographic studies or incisions (Munhall, 2006; Spradley & McCurdy, 1980) set within macro environments. These incisions or detailed specific points are selected to represent particular aspects usually at the everyday, face-to-face community perspective in the lives of participants and can inform understanding for the larger group or institution.

Thus, from detailed examinations of the micro, underlying principles and concepts can be identified, as in this project feeding back and informing the wider macro leaning environment for tertiary students. The research approach used in this project fulfills the following key New Ethnography criteria. It involves the researcher working collaboratively at a micro level within a natural setting, thus the real world, everyday reality of the participants is recorded. It allows both a full representation of the voices of the participant informants and also an explicit positioning of the researcher, so while voice is inevitably re-presented as it is re-told within the constraints of research reporting, authenticity and ownership are made explicit and retained (D’Cruz & Jones, 2004) within the discourse of both students and staff.