Beyond the Classroom Walls

Ethnographic Inquiry as Pedagogy

June A. Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136706080
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book integrates ethnographic research with teacher education strategies, with the aim of preparing teachers to work with urban and low-income youth in schools and other social service agencies. Through various case studies, Gordon provides insight into how educators in diverse settings can engage students-be they preservice or veteran teachers-in the process of discovering the complexity of their students' lives, as well as their own.

CHAPTER 1

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Students Reengaging Their Home Communities

ONE OF THE MOST SALIENT FORCES UNDERMINING HIGHER EDUCATION IS disengagement. Students leave college for a variety of reasons, but often it is due to an inability to find a connection between their personal lives prior to college and the work that is required for success in higher education. This is particularly true for students of color and working-class students who do not see the relevance of a detached liberal arts education to the demands of their lives “back home” (Duster, 1991; Astin, 1993). For many of these students, their past life was just that, passed, hidden, and disconnected from their current pursuits. This disjunction can cause resentment, friction, and distancing from the very environment they need to engage in order to succeed. For first-generation college students, the situation is compounded in a variety of ways.

First of all, there is the separation of self from family While part of growing up involves creating a unique identity, when that development takes place in isolation from the family context the new identity can be perceived as determined by outside influences. The inability and the inappropriateness of sharing the realities of college life with one’s family and friends can inhibit fluid communication and create distance. Intellectual growth at school can create emotional tension at home. For working-class students one might even ask if it is possible to really “go home” once you have been to university. Second, first-generation students experience separation of self from other students. Isolation kicks in when working-class students on prestigious university campuses believe that they are alone in dealing with this schizophrenic existence. As a result, they resist sharing with peers, faculty, or staff members what is happening to them. They hesitate to talk about their past, their family, their trials, their lives “back home.” Third, masking of self becomes a necessary survival skill. Political rhetoric and bravado at times are used to mask the confusion, loneliness, and academic gaps. Having to maintain a facade at both home and school drains energy that could be used for academic achievement. Fourth, as a result of separation, isolation, and masking, students do not reveal their need for assistance (Fullilove and Treisman, 1990). Working-class students may fear exposure of weaknesses, particularly if they have been accepted to an elite university and are the first to leave their community to attend college. Unaware of differences in cultural capital and how educational background favors some students over others, they would rather “go it alone” than collaborate with those whom they assume are different from them. They carry the burden of family pride mixed with fear of failure. In reality, they know that their success in the context of their community is moot in comparison to their middle- and upper-middle class college peers; revealing inadequacies would jeopardize their status. While they cannot go back, they fear moving forward as they lack the skills and knowledge to negotiate the system.

Knowing of this dilemma, as I have lived the experience myself, I reached out to my undergraduate students who perceived themselves as either “at risk” or marginalized. In collaboration, we designed intensive research projects that linked their prior lives to their current academic selves. The goal was to allow them to explore issues of identity and educational achievement within their own social, cultural, and ethnic communities. As noted in the work of Vasquez and others (1994) and Velez-Ibanez and Greenberg (1992), school knowledge can be empowering for subordinate groups, as long as it respects, and even draws upon, the cultural resources of those groups. Similarly, the retention data on first-generation college students, particularly if they are students of color, demonstrate that students who connect with a faculty member through research that is perceived as beneficial to both sides tend to achieve academically and graduate at a higher rate (Astin, 1993). Following the insights of Claude Steele (Hummel & Steele, 1996), I have found that engaging students in authentic research and inquiry brings about their own best efforts and eventual success. For these particular students, ethnographic research increased their retention and provided them with direction and confidence toward careers in public school teaching, counseling, and related professions. In short, I found that returning students to their communities as researchers provided a form of critical engagement that reached multiple goals.

The major goal of the work was to enhance student success through a cohort of diverse students working in collaboration with each other and with an instructor as well as with various individuals of their communities. It involved a process by which research bears on the needs of the community—a process that fosters the need to understand. The sources for this approach to the integration of research, teaching, and service are the many strands of critical pedagogy that seek to involve the student as an active participant in the learning process through cultural awareness and community service as developed by Freire (1970), Horton and Freire (1990), Shor (1980), Moses (see Chevidgney, 1996), and others. This approach also utilizes learning through research in schools and communities that enhance professional development in educators (Becker, 1998) as well as critical ethnography found in studies by Carspecken (1996) and others. Critical ethnographies that focus on students include Anyon (1995), Fine (1991), McLaren (1986), Connell, (1989), Weis (1985), MacLeod (1987), Holland and Eisenhart (1993), and Solomon (1992).

This chapter is not about the research findings from the undergraduate research projects but rather about the use of ethnographic research as pedagogy for engagement and retention. The three research groups that emerged from this effort focused on the absence of Asian Americans in the teaching force; Latina identity: colleges as settings for confusion; and gang affiliation and educational aspirations. In the following pages I will explain how these three groups were formed, how the research was conducted, and the nature of the transformative process for both informants and students. The groups consisted of students who had completed an undergraduate upper-division course with me that focused on theory and research related to the education of urban students. The course was titled “Minorities in the Schooling Process.” In each case, students, unbeknownst to their peers, had either come to me personally or had written in one of their assignments about an issue or concern that was inhibiting their academic progress at the university. They all perceived that they were unique in their frustration or situation and were to some extent in “hiding.” After I spoke with each of them at length and identified their concern, I inquired if they would be interested in meeting other students who were wrestling with the same or similar problems. For those that agreed, I offered the possibility of conducting research on their specific topic over an extended period of time. All were trained in basic qualitative research methods: how to identify respondents; how to open up dialogue around difficult issues; confidentiality; probes; and general ethnographic protocol. In some cases student researchers coded their own data; in most cases they transcribed and translated their own tapes or field notes.

ASIAN AMERICANS RESEARCH THE ABSENCE OF ASIAN AMERICANS IN THE TEACHING FORCE

The socially constructed population category “Asian” is a rather new phenomenon used by “outsiders” to denote individuals who live in or who have ancestry from a certain but rather large and widely varied geographical area. Seldom is this term used by Asians themselves. Rather they refer to themselves by their nationality: Chinese, Cambodian, Japanese, Filipino, and so on. Who defines what is Asia? Are Indians of the “subcontinent” Asian? Are Russians east of the Urals? Are Samoans? Ironically, Filipinos are often in a netherworld when it comes to their Asian identity, particularly in the United States. Since many Filipinos have Spanish surnames, they are often misidentified as Latino. Caught between the rejection by people of the East Asian communities as well as the Latino community, Filipinos, while one of the largest “minority” populations in California, are seldom acknowledged as a powerful force with which to contend.

During the last couple of weeks of the course, I watched with amazement as a group of Asian American students converted a presentation on the work of Lisa Delpit and other African American authors on Black English to a discussion of Asian, specifically Filipino, “Pidgin English.” They based their resistance to the readings on the claim that the literature on diversity both in higher education and in K-12 schools minimized the voices of Asian Americans compared to African Americans and Latinos. For the first time all quarter, I heard the public voices of students who had refused to speak up or offer critique. Their presentation provided fascinating information that set the context for language variation in both historical and cultural context. Granted, the class had almost a hundred students in it but there were far more Asian Americans than there were African Americans enrolled and the latter had no problem stating their views. Having a background in East Asian studies myself, I understood the complexity of the socially constructed term “Asian” and how it masked tremendous diversity in terms of religion, language, ethnicity, and national identity. I was also aware of the divisions among supposedly intact groups based on time of immigration, time in country, and socioeconomic status. Yet, in this education class these students came together united around their apparent “oppression” and, at my invitation, came to talk to me individually about their concerns.

When asked how they proposed to alter not only the representation of Asians in the research literature but also the numbers of Asians in the teaching profession, they hesitated and acknowledged that they were unsure if they would ultimately choose teaching as their life’s work even though they, as undergraduates, had already taken several courses in the education minor. In all cases the students believed that they were not in control of their occupational decisions, that there were larger forces at play coming from the community, their families, and their peers. They claimed that teaching was not an acceptable profession to their families and, as a result, they had been “in hiding” about their extensive coursework in education and any consideration of teaching as a career. Their feelings of frustration and impotence led me to invite them to explore how general these perceptions were among Asian American youth as well as to inquire with their families and community as to the source of their attitudes toward education and teaching as a profession. Although these meetings began informally, a pattern clearly emerged from each conversation, one that reinforced my previous research on Asian American attitudes toward perceived career options.

Having previously conducted research on the reasons students of color might be selecting teaching as a profession, I had some understanding of Asian American concerns as well as those of Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans, at least within the three urban areas I had studied: Seattle, Cincinnati, and Long Beach, California. Out of these four major ethnic groups as represented by the 160 teachers of color I had interviewed, Asian Americans comprised only 20 of the informants due to their scarcity in the urban districts under study. The data from that research project indicated that Asian Americans resisted teaching as a career choice for three reasons: (1) personal feelings of inadequacy in dealing with the multiple social service demands placed on teachers in America, (2) the traditional image of teacher within Asian culture, and (3) the fear of teaching non-Asian children.

Of the thirteen Asian undergraduates in the class, nine agreed to participate in a group independent research project. They represented five different ethnic groups coming from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds: three Chinese, one Japanese, one Chinese born in Vietnam, one Vietnamese, two Filipinos, and one Korean; three males and six females. All were committed to the retention of their culture and had volunteered numerous times in their respective cultural and community organizations. Wanting to create a space for them to reflect more carefully on this process, I invited them to write about the circumstances that had brought them to the point where they were taking undergraduate education courses that were intended to prepare teachers for urban schools. Given that this curricular decision could potentially be in conflict with parental expectations, I asked them to identify key issues relating to their ethnicity and personal identity as relevant to academic performance and career choice. The goal was to provide the students the opportunity to situate themselves, reveal bias, gain perspective, and revisit their own concerns around career choice options. The assignment also served as a way to verify the comments I first heard in the initial discussions with the students and provide me with baseline data from which to note their evolution through the research process.

We agreed that each student would be responsible for interviewing at least eight individuals, translating when necessary and transcribing the data. In the end, they conducted a total of fifty-two interviews with Asian Americans in various California settings including San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, and Los Angeles. In addition to the interviews, they wrote a reflective statement on each interview commenting on both its authenticity and how it spoke to them. The project took six months. We met every other week during this period to discuss the process and the content of the interviews as we simultaneously developed and considered theories. Based on the interviews with the nine students and comments from their personal essays, I created a list of most frequently stated reasons for not going into teaching and compared them with my previous findings with Asian American teachers. The students verified the accuracy of these reasons based on their own experiences within the Asian American communities. This list was then used as a springboard for developing the interview questions that they used in their research, and, later, in coding the information provided by their informants.

During the first few months of the research, the group reviewed the content and process of the data collection, discussing the following issues: what was emerging, as new, as constant? how to access more information from the interviews? how to expand and refine the interview questions? who else to included and why? Based on the main themes that emerged from these conversations with the researchers, their written reflections, and pilot interviews, I developed an analytical scheme that reflected the salient issues emerging from the process. The scheme allowed for the tracking of variation and consistency across time, population, and region. In comparing what we found as interesting (and therefore discussed among ourselves) with the popularity of responses among the informants, we included frequency of accounts and reasons given for not entering the field of teaching.

As a group we read and matched our coding across all interviews threading back to check for possible cultural misinterpretations and noting paradoxes. We constantly reminded ourselves of the complexity of Asian American identity, noting each informant’s current age as well as time of arrival in the United States; conditions of leaving and arriving; parental status in home country in contrast to current occupation; and obvious factors such as country of origin, spoken languages, and gender. Team members understood the problems of operating within the context of the socially constructed rubric of Asian American. We all knew the historical context of antipathy among various Asian groups and especially among Chinese groups: Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong and other “overseas” Chinese. All of us spoke one or more of the native languages and could compare linguistic variation when discussing in-group/out-group pressures. This commonality of understanding greatly increased our effectiveness in coding and enabled us to look candidly at the complexity and sensitivity of the research results.

Overlaying cultural differences is the historical legacy that each group carries in the form of memories and stories passed down through family and community concerning relations among Asian peoples. Cambodian and Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese, Chinese and Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese have all been caught in the role of exploiter and victim, predator and prey. Stereotypes and expectations arose around these social constructs, not only with the informants but also with the student interviewers themselves. We realized quickly that if these issues were not revisited and discussed openly, a form of calcification could result. At the start, my students were just as tentative about each other as their grandparents may have been thirty or fifty years ago. To bring them together as a group we had to deconstruct the images of the past to make room for the information that they would be expected to share from their interviews, information which might restimulate old hatreds and animosity.

Most of the student researchers and their informants were unaware that there was a shortage of Asian American public school teachers. This was due to several factors. Most of the researchers grew up in ethnic enclaves where the presence of Asians of common ancestry was strong. Some worked in ethnically based bilingual or community educational programs that employed Asian instructors. In their youth, some attended Saturday Asian identity schools. And last, they did not subscribe to the assumption that race-matched teaching is either better or necessary. Having an Asian teacher in public school did not, from their perspective, assist in their access to knowledge or guarantee their academic or social success. The experience of dialogue through interviewing allowed the student researchers to explore issues of identity and educational achievement within their own social, cultural, and ethnic communities while developing a broader context for their own decision to become teachers.

The interviews provided opportunities for them to talk to people about issues that normally remained hidden or silenced among Asian Americans. A few had some of their first adult conversations with members of their community about career aspirations. Several discovered that family members had been teachers “back home.” One student discovered that he came from a long line of prestigious educators back in the Philippines. Some informants revealed how they had been treated when they came to the United States and how they were not seen as professionals, unable to obtain work in an area which they had come to see as their “calling.” Conversations that had never occurred before revealed a strong support of, and confusion over, teaching as a profession in this country. As my students explained their understanding of the K-12 system and the shortage of Asian American teachers in assisting in shaping the lives of young people and policies that affect this country, the researchers themselves moved closer to a career commitment to teaching. They also gained the blessing of their families, something which in Asian communities, we found out, is essential if one is to make career moves outside of the prescribed norm of the community. Again the dialogical process of gathering data, providing data, personal transformation and “other” transformation provided unexpected outcomes for everyone involved. The findings were fascinating, complex, and paradoxical (Gordon, 2000b).

Having student researchers explore the reasons why students from similar ethnic backgrounds appeared to be resisting teaching as a profession provided me with insights that I could not have gained otherwise in my own research. First, these students brought enthusiasm to the work; they were considering teaching as a career and wanted to find out why others similar to them were not becoming teachers. Second, as Asian American students closely tied to their respective communities,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Students Reengaging Their Home Communities
• Chapter 2 Immigrants and Education: Dialogic Inquiry as Pedagogy
• Chapter 3 Future Teachers Assist in Urban, Low-Income, Multicultural Classrooms
• Chapter 4 “Masks of Normality”: Teacher Training on a Military Base
• Chapter 5 Confronting the Larger Community of Helping Professionals
• Chapter 6 Home Visits
• Chapter 7 Deconstructing Youth At Risk
• Chapter 8 Adult Educators Inquire into Workplace Stress
• Chapter 9 First Quarter Attrition: Community College Staff and Faculty Ask Why
• Afterword
• References
• Index