what is critical ethnography research

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Critical ethnography: An under-used research methodology in neuroscience nursing

PMID: 27468600

Critical ethnography is a qualitative research method that endeavours to explore and understand dominant discourses that are seen as being the 'right' way to think, see, talk about or enact a particular 'action' or situation in society and recommend ways to re-dress social power inequities. In health care, vulnerable populations, including many individuals who have experienced neurological illnesses or injuries that leave them susceptible to the influence of others, would be suitable groups for study using critical ethnography methodology. Critical ethnography has also been used to study workplace culture. While ethnography has been effectively used to underpin other phenomena of interest to neuroscience nurses, only one example of the use of critical ethnography exists in the published literature related to neuroscience nursing. In our "Research Corner" in this issue of the Canadian Journal of Neuroscience Nursing (CJNN) our guest editors, Dr. Cheryl Ross and Dr. Cath Rogers will briefly highlight the origins of qualitative research, ethnography, and critical ethnography and describe how they are used and, as the third author, I will discuss the relevance of critical ethnography findings for neuroscience nurses.

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Ethnographic borders and crossings: Critical ethnography, intersectionality, and blurring the boundaries of insider research

Fronteras y cruces etnográficos: etnografía crítica, interseccionalidad y difuminación de los límites en la investigación desde adentro, almita a. miranda.

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI USA

Critical ethnographers have long challenged positivist notions of research objectivity and the presumed unbiased observer, arguing that one’s theoretical lens and positionality influence research design, access, and experiences in the field. Scholars of color have further pointed out the need to examine people’s lived experiences through an intersectional framework, acknowledging the ways in which people’s lives are situated within larger structures of power and forms of oppression. In this paper, I use critical ethnography as an intersectional methodological approach to examine the lived experiences of mixed-status families and situate them within a larger political-economic context of restrictive immigration policies and neoliberal globalization. Critical ethnography is a useful methodology when interrogating larger questions of structure and agency, positionality, and social justice scholarship. I use critical ethnography to challenge the rigidity of ethnographic borders by proposing a concept of “ethnographic crossings” as moments in time and space when the roles of researchers and participants become blurred and intertwined. I draw on ethnographic examples to show the evolution of my project—from gaining access to immigrant families and following them across two countries to the close relationships developed during fieldwork that crossed emotional boundaries.

Los etnógrafos críticos llevan años desafiando las nociones positivistas de objetividad investigativa y del supuesto observador imparcial argumentando que el lente teórico y la posicionalidad de una persona influyen en el diseño de las investigaciones, el acceso y las experiencias de campo. Investigadores de grupos racializados han señalado también la necesidad de examinar las experiencias vividas por las personas a través de un marco interseccional que reconozca las formas en las que las vidas de las personas se sitúan dentro de estructuras mayores de poder y tipos de opresión. Utilizo la etnografía crítica en este artículo como propuesta metodológica interseccional para examinar las experiencias vividas de familias de estatus migratorio mixto y situarlas dentro de un contexto político económico más amplio de políticas migratorias restrictivas y globalización neoliberal. La etnografía crítica es una metodología útil para plantear preguntas mayores de estructura y acción, posicionalidad y trabajo académico de justicia social. Utilizo la etnografía crítica para desafiar la rigidez de las fronteras etnográficas proponiendo un concepto de “cruces etnográficos”: momentos en el tiempo y el espacio en los que los papeles de investigador y participante se difuminan y entrelazan. Parto de ejemplos etnográficos para demostrar la evolución de mi proyecto: desde conseguir acceso a las familias inmigrantes y seguirlas a través de dos países hasta las relaciones estrechas desarrolladas durante el trabajo de campo que cruzaron los límites emocionales.

Saludos desde Chicago (Greetings from Chicago)

As I prepared for my trip to Zacatecas, Mexico, in the summer of 2010, I received a call from Valeria, asking me if I could take some gifts to her family. 1 Valeria had not seen her parents since 2000 when she migrated to the United States with her husband, Max. After marrying, the young couple undertook a dangerous border crossing journey through the desert with the help of a coyote (smuggler). Unbeknownst to her, Valeria was a few weeks pregnant when she walked for nearly a day and half through the desert. She injured her foot one night but was able to complete the journey with the help of her husband. The couple first settled in Denver, and later moved to Chicago to join Max’s brothers. They have since raised three US-born daughters in a mixed-status family—composed of both undocumented immigrants and US citizens (Fix and Zimmermann 2001 ).

I first met Valeria in 2003 through a mutual friend. Over the years, I befriended Max’s family, Los Sanchez, regularly attending their children’s birthday parties and religious celebrations. I observed as Valeria meticulously video-recorded family parties, asking everyone to send their greetings and good wishes to those in Mexico. She prepared VHS cassettes and mailed them to her parents, later to be shared among different households. She kept them informed of major life events en el Norte , ensuring that their connections and family ties persisted despite their long periods of separation. Unable to travel freely to Zacatecas because of her undocumented status, Valeria found comfort in sending gifts and photographs to her loved ones. “ Me los saluda mucho. Y a ver como ve a mis papás ,” she stated, after dropping off a small package for me to take to her family. It was the least I could do, although I still lamented the unfairness of the situation.

It has been more than a decade since my initial trip to Mexico, and Valeria and Max continue to live in a mixed-status family, alongside their now teenage daughters. An estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants, like this couple, live in the United States, and 16 million people live in mixed-status households (Passel and Cohn 2019 ). Mixed-status families form part of larger transnational communities, but US immigration policies have made it difficult for undocumented immigrants already living in the United States to adjust their legal status. These families have thus been forced to live in “legal limbo” (Gonzales 2016 ; Miranda 2017 ) or “liminal legality” (Menjívar 2006 ) that keeps them in a state of uncertainty, under the constant threat of removal and forced relocation. For more than a decade, I have conducted long-term ethnographic research with Mexican mixed-status families in Chicago and return migrants in Zacatecas, Mexico, examining the ways these families negotiate restrictive immigration policies in their daily lives. I have seen families rely on local and transnational networks to keep their families together, sometimes successfully, other times not. Through this research, I have found that ethnographic boundaries of researcher/researched, insider/outsider, scholar/activist have become blurred, forcing me to grapple with the benefits and challenges of doing critical ethnography in one’s home community.

Critical ethnographers have long challenged positivist notions of research objectivity and the presumed unbiased observer, arguing that one’s theoretical lens and positionality influence research design, access, and experiences in the field (Castagno 2012 ; Madison 2012 ). Scholars of color have further pointed out the need to examine people’s lived experiences through an intersectional framework, acknowledging the ways in which people’s lives are situated within larger structures of power and oppression (Collins and Bilge 2020 ). In this paper, I use critical ethnography as an intersectional methodological approach to examine the lived experiences of mixed-status families and situate them within a larger political-economic context of restrictive immigration policies and neoliberal globalization. Critical ethnography, I argue, is a useful methodology that helps us interrogate larger questions of structure and agency, positionality, and social justice scholarship. I use critical ethnography to challenge the rigidity of ethnographic borders or divisions between “us” and “them,” and instead, propose a concept of “ethnographic crossings” as moments in time and space when the roles of researchers and participants become blurred and intertwined. I draw on ethnographic examples to show the evolution of my project—from gaining access to immigrant families and following them across two countries to the close relationships developed during fieldwork that crossed emotional boundaries. Through these reflections, I provide commentary on ongoing discussions in ethnography, insider/outsider status, and the continued responsibility researchers have to communities long after fieldwork has concluded.

Critical ethnography as an intersectional methodological approach

In the introduction to this special issue, Ramírez and Ríos make a call for the need to adopt an intersectional lens to better design and carry out empirical research. As they argue, such a lens not only helps account for the complex identities of participants and researchers, but also pushes us to move toward a more collaborative and social-justice-based agenda that benefits not only researchers but also the communities with whom we work. They thus propose a framework of “intersectional methodological approaches,” highlighting the need to (1) be attentive to the ways in which participants’ intersectional identities shape their lived experiences, (2) prioritize a collaborative relationship with participants in the production of knowledge, and (3) engage in a critical reflection of one’s positionality during the research process.

Many scholars have already called for critical research, and reflexivity has been taken up by many scholars in the past, particularly scholars of color since the 1970s. But the fact that rightists are attacking these frameworks, even legislating against their use at all, makes this focus all the more crucial. As of November 2021, for instance, state legislatures have passed bills in nine states and are debating others in nineteen states that prevent K-12 schools from teaching certain concepts related to race and gender and discussions of “conscious or unconscious bias, privilege, discrimination, and oppression” (see Ray and Gibbons 2021 for list of state bills). Not only is critical race theory (CRT)—an analytic framework that examines the intersections of history, law, and systemic forms of racism—not standard teaching in K–12 curricula, but these legislative efforts aim to prevent any serious discussions of race or of the ways institutional racism has affected our past and continue to shape present inequities. Relatedly, the framework of intersectionality, first championed by feminists and women of color (e.g., Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw), asks us to examine forms of oppression through different axes of power and structures, including race, class, and gender, among others.

Ethnography as a critical methodology

Ethnography has often been characterized by its dual function—representing both the process of doing fieldwork and the product or written text based of a researcher’s analysis and interpretation (Emerson et al. 2011 ). In Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Emerson et al. ( 2011 ) provide an instructional text on the process of ethnographic research and the different factors that can influence what a researcher finds in the field based on context, interpretation, and textual representation. During fieldwork, an ethnographer engages in “participant observation”—an immersive experience of learning about people’s social worlds through direct observation and active participation in people’s daily activities and interactions (Emerson et al. 2011 , p. 1). The researcher writes down descriptive fieldnotes based on their observations, later to be referenced during the writing process and data analysis. Participant-observation is a central component of ethnographic fieldwork, but it is not the only one, as many researchers also use structured or unstructured interviews, life histories, surveys, and linguistic or material culture analysis. Others may also use a mixed-methods approach, including archival research or statistical data, to strengthen their findings (di Leonardo 2006 ).

In many ways, ethnographic research is context-specific (based on time, place, and access) and dependent on the relationships that a researcher forms with the communities with whom they work. In order to develop meaningful relationships, a researcher engages in deep immersion ethnography by living in the field site (often for extended periods of time) and “see[ing] from the inside how people lead their lives, how they carry out their daily rounds of activities, what they find meaningful, and how they do so” (Emerson et al. 2011 , p. 3). A key goal of ethnography is thus to gain a level of familiarity or “closeness” with interlocutors to learn not only what they do, but how they come to understand and construct meaning in their daily lives. This kind of context-based analysis and layered interpretation is what Geertz ( 1973 ) has famously referred to as “thick description,” aimed to distinguish it from “thin” surface-level observations or responses. These encounters, however, are also influenced by a researcher’s “consequential presence” or “the effects of the ethnographer’s participation on how members may talk and behave” (Emerson et al. 2011 , p. 4). Ethnographers should thus be self-aware of how their presence is shaping the field, and how their positionality and identities may affect what interlocutors choose to reveal or withhold from them.

I would argue that ethnographic fieldwork is always a co-constructed experience, in which both parties—researchers and interlocutors—are reading each other and making conscious or unconscious decisions about how to present themselves and interact with one another. Fortunately, one of the distinctions of ethnographic research is that it is often carried out over extended periods of time, whether these are continuous months or spread out over several years. It is not uncommon for anthropologists to write ethnographies based on multiple years of fieldwork, including periodic returns to the field. As Emerson et al. note, “Continuing time in the field tends to dilute the insights generated by initial perceptions that arise in adapting to and discovering what is significant to others; it blunts early sensitivities to subtle patterns and underlying tensions. In short, the field researcher does not learn about the concerns and meaning of others all at once but, rather, in a constant, continuing process in which she builds new insight and understanding upon prior insights and understandings” ( 2011 , p. 17). This long-term commitment and cumulative knowledge help researchers gain deeper understanding of local contexts and trace significant changes over time. Similarly, interlocutors can also benefit from the duration of a project by having opportunities to learn more about the ethnographer and deciding whether or not to build trusting relationships with them.

Although ethnography does have the potential for creating real partnerships with community members, we must not underestimate the power dynamics between researchers and participants in the research process, as these relationships can also become exploitative and one-directional. Latino/a/x anthropologists and ethnographers, in particular, have been at the forefront of some of these discussions—from challenging the false dichotomies of the researcher/researched to problematizing power imbalances in ethnographic fieldwork and highlighting nuances on insider/outsider dilemmas. So what happens “when natives talk back”?

The politics of representation and insider/outsider dilemmas

Ethnography has had a long and complicated history in the field of anthropology. Although at first it was used as a colonial tool to help keep colonial powers informed of native populations, it was also a deviation from “armchair anthropology.” Early on, the discipline also had figures like Franz Boas (“the father of American anthropology”) who combated early twentieth-century scientific racism and eugenics-based claims on the inferiority of immigrants (di Leonardo 1998 ; Gonzalez and Chávez 2019 ). He promoted cultural relativism and trained individuals, such as Manuel Gamio who, in 1930, wrote the earliest ethnographic study of Mexican immigrants based on fieldwork in Chicago (Gonzalez and Chávez 2019 ). Yet, many of the early ethnographic works written about Mexican populations in the United States were done by white male anthropologists and drew on stereotypes and reinforced depictions of these communities as pathological, lazy, and superstitious (Gonzalez and Chávez 2019 ; Alvarez 1995 ).

With the rise of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Chicana/o social scientists began to question these depictions of their communities by providing counternarratives with their own studies (e.g., Américo Paredes, Octavio Romano, Carlos Velez-Ibañez, Renato Rosaldo) (Gonzalez and Chávez 2019 ; Davalos 2001 ; Alvarez 1995 ). Chicana feminist anthropologists were particularly influential in contesting narrow representations of the Chicano family, highlighting the voices of both US-born and immigrant women (e.g., Zavella 1987 ). Chicano/a anthropologists further challenged the dichotomies between the researcher and the researched, as well as presumptions made about native anthropologists and the quality of their work. As Chicana anthropologist Monica Russel y Rodríguez writes, “The single status of ethnographer as objective knower not only concerns the Native as the knowable, static, simple object but upholds the researchers as superior, civilized, and complex. Conversely, the criterion for being the objective knower is to be not-Native. The Native knower, or Visweswaran’s ‘native authority,’ reveals this naked contradiction. … Although anthropologists of color are equality capable of writing good and bad ethnographies, they/we are also well positioned to expose this division” ( 1998 , p. 17). Feminist and Chicana anthropologists have also complicated notions of insider/outsider research, by pointing out that being “an insider” does not necessarily give one easier access to the field (di Leonardo 1987 ; Zavella 1993 ; Russel y Rodríguez 2007 ). There are always ways in which an ethnographer can be part of the community with whom they work, but also be an outsider in other respects.

The political-economic context of Mexican migration and mixed-status families

Mexicans have constituted the largest undocumented group in the United States since the 1920s (Ngai 2004 ). Thus the push and pull factors influencing that enormous labor migration have been various. But the presence of the first Mexicans in U.S territory was a result of American imperialist expansion. The presence of Mexican labor in the United States has operated under a “revolving-door policy,” wherein mass removals (e.g., the deportations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the Great Depression) tend to be followed with migration incentives during years of labor shortages (e.g., the Bracero Program during World War II) (De Genova 2005 ; Massey et al. 2002 ). The demand for labor without the proper legal recognition has created a “migrant illegality” that has “historically rendered Mexican labor to be a distinctly disposable commodity,” highly exploitable and vulnerable for their “condition of deportability” (De Genova 2005 , p. 215).

Although the passing of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was intended to create a tariff-free zone to encourage trade and investment among Mexico, the United States, and Canada, it has arguably worsened economic conditions for small farms and businesses in Mexico (Bacon 2004 ; Harvey 2005 ). NAFTA has caused small agriculture and dairy farms, for example, to go bankrupt because of their inability to compete with US subsidized corn and powdered milk imports (Bacon 2004 ; McDonald 1997 ). This has led to rising unemployment rates, increased poverty, and further immigration pressures, particularly from rural Mexico (Bacon 2004 ). Many of my interlocutors, like Valeria and Max, migrated to the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s when they were still teenagers and have not returned since. A majority of them are from Zacatecas and Michoacán—two states with a long history of Mexican rural out-migration (García Zamora 2000 ; Massey et al. 2002 ).

While some are quick to suggest that we can decrease “illegal immigration” by “tightening our borders,” sociologist Douglas S. Massey’s work has demonstrated that the increase in border enforcement since the mid-1980s has actually decreased the previously common outflow movement and encouraged migrants to remain in the US for longer periods of time (Massey et al. 2002 ). This longer stay has resulted in more immigrants setting down roots and forming families, many of which are of mixed status. Children can be citizens even if their parents are undocumented because the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution grants them birthright citizenship. Under current US immigration laws, mixed-status families have no protection from separation in the case of a parent’s deportation.

Mexican mixed-status families are not entirely novel in US history, but their numbers have experienced unprecedented growth in the past few decades (Passel et al. 2012 ), attributable to the unique set of conditions characterizing the current wave of undocumented Mexican labor migration (1986–present) and new settlement patterns distinct from the previous largely circular migration flow (Massey et al. 2002 ). These conditions include rising inequalities in Mexico caused by recent neoliberal global shifts (Harvey 2005 ; Mize and Swords 2011 ), the increased militarization of the US-Mexico border (Andreas 2000 ), restrictive US immigration laws from the 1990s forward (Parker 2007 ; Hagan et al. 2008 ), and the reemergence of an anti-immigrant/anti-Mexican political climate since the mid-1990s (Chavez 2008 ; Rosenblum 2011 ). With the passage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the new Homeland Security measures taken post-9/11, for instance, members of mixed-status families have fewer options for adjusting their legal status or canceling the forced removal of an undocumented or legal immigrant on the basis of marriage, family ties, or length of stay in the United States (Guzmán 2000 ; Sutter 2006 ; Hagan et al. 2008 ; Mercer 2008 ).

Ethnographic encounters

To study how mixed-status families and their communities have been affected by immigration policies and, in turn, responded to these pressures, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork over the course of several years (2010–2016), as well as during summer periods since 2006. In my larger research project, Living in Legal Limbo, I examine the ways in which undocumented immigrants, US citizens, and return migrants navigate the legal and social constraints to which their families’ uncertain status exposes them in the United States and in Mexico. My research was multisited, focused in the Midwest (in Chicago, in particular) and in north-central Mexico (in the state of Zacatecas). The Chicago area is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the United States (the first is Los Angeles). Zacatecas’ migration stream has long-established communities in three key states—California, Texas, and Illinois (García Zamora 2000 ; 2005 ). I used primarily ethnographic methods—such as participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, life histories, and focus groups—as well as media and discourse analysis. Here, I focus on the participant-observation and life history interviews during different phases of my ethnographic research.

Entering a familiar field and developing an intersectional lens

I began my research on mixed-status families back in 2006. My interests in studying the effects of US immigration policy on immigrant families stemmed from both my personal background and a political commitment to advocate for immigrant rights. In 2006, Chicago was at the center of the immigrant rights movement, organizing the first large mobilizations against the infamous anti-immigrant bill HR4437, or “Sensenbrenner bill,” and calling for the need for comprehensive immigration reform. In ¡Marcha!, Pallares and Flores-González ( 2010 ) write about this historic moment and the ways in which different groups—from religious congregations to labor unions and grassroots organizations—partnered with Spanish-language media to organize and encourage people to come out and protest. Chicago was also the site of the sanctuary case of Elvira Arellano that gave rise to the New Sanctuary Movement, in which undocumented immigrants relied on religious and community networks to resist orders of deportation, not seen since the 1980s (Pallares 2014 ; Miranda 2017 ). Arellano would later become a key interlocutor in my research.

My participation in the immigrant rights marches and subsequent organizing efforts helped shape my early research, leading me to pursue graduate study. The public debates over immigration and the constant attempts to vilify undocumented immigrants as “criminals” or “a threat to the nation” were especially hurtful (Chavez 2008 ). The personal was indeed political. I am the daughter of two Mexican immigrants (formerly undocumented) who had migrated to Chicago in the late 1970s and worked in manufacturing and service sector jobs. My parents were later able to legalize their status after the passing of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). But there was now a new generation of undocumented immigrants with few to no legal options for adjusting their status. They had come to the U.S. in the 1990s and early 2000s, following economic crises and widening income inequalities tied to neoliberal globalization (Harvey 2005 ; Golash-Boza 2012 ). But how did their experiences differ from those of previous generations? And how did undocumented immigrants and US citizens experience their family’s mixed status differently, based on their intersectional identities? Over the next few years, I set out to answer these questions and others, as I conducted critical ethnography and life history interviews with Mexican mixed-status families in Chicago.

My personal networks and familiarity with immigrant communities in Chicago gave me a certain level of access to the field, but this “closeness” also presented its own challenges. The boundaries between researcher and participants were not always clearly marked, as some of my first interlocutors were friends and others were recruited through snowball sampling. My insider/outsider status became more fluid and context-specific. At times I was seen as “an insider,” but I was also aware of my positionality and the power imbalances. I was not an immigrant, and my US citizenship afforded me privileges that many of my interlocutors did not have. Early on, I recall being hyperaware of how I interacted during interviews, trying to show when things were “on the record” by having my voice recorder out and other times pausing it to give the speaker space and simply lend a sympathetic ear. Crossing these ethnographic borders became sometimes necessary to allow for a more human or humane interaction, reassuring people that this was more than research to me.

It was during this period that I interviewed Valeria and Max for the first time. I had met Valeria a few years prior through a mutual friend and had socialized with her at their family gatherings. When I first asked Valeria if I could interview her for my research, she was very receptive and encouraged her husband to participate as well. As I would later find, this was not a common experience. It usually took twice as long for men to be willing to talk to me. They were understandably mistrustful of who I was and why I wanted to interview them about their migration and family life. I could hardly blame them, as this process could feel intrusive and require them to be vulnerable with an outsider.

Valeria and Max preferred to be interviewed together, and though I was skeptical of being able to keep up with both perspectives, they were incredible storytellers and would each remind the other of things the other had forgotten. During our first interview, I focused on their childhoods in Mexico, reasons for migration, and their border-crossing journeys to the United States. Their detailed descriptions of crossing the border were painful to hear, and I became concerned that my interview could be re-traumatizing. They would later tell me that it was cathartic or un alivio (a relief) to share their experience, but I did not ask them to revisit the story in follow-up interviews. Other interviewees also shared with me their crossing journeys, and I would remind them that it was fine if there were things they did not want to discuss. These were life-changing stories with significant memories and reflections, but they were also emotionally taxing for both narrator and listener. Their narratives haunted me thereafter. I had grown up listening to these type of border stories, but they had become progressively more gruesome and deadly as 1990s US border security policies led to a rise in migrant deaths in the desert (De León 2015 ).

Crossing the border, however, was only the beginning. As Valeria and Max recounted, they continued to experience daily forms of surveillance in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. As Gilberto Rosas ( 2006 ) has theorized, there has been a “thickening of the borderlands” that has extended border securitization into the interior through enforcement policies in a post-9/11 United States. Although they were both vulnerable to racialized forms of discrimination because of their Latino identity, they each experienced the limitations of their undocumented status differently in their daily lives. Max, for instance, felt constrained about the places he could work and still remain undetected. Like other undocumented workers, he relied on family and friend networks to recommend places where his lack of work authorization would not present an issue (Gomberg-Muñoz 2010 ). He worked at a bakery in a Latino supermarket, only a few blocks away from his home, thus avoiding the need to drive long distances without a license. The couple admitted to staying within the city limits, avoiding neighboring suburbs where police were reportedly cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and targeting Latino drivers.

As a stay-at-home mother, Valeria’s social world was initially limited to Max’s family, but she soon carved out her own female networks through her daughters’ school where she met other immigrant mothers. She also interacted regularly with health and school officials, who encouraged her to seek out resources for her family and learn strategies for getting around without a social security number. For example, Valeria learned from a comadre about applying for an ITIN number to open a bank account, and she was the one in charge of administering the family’s income while setting aside money to send to Mexico. For many years, the family lived in a small basement apartment, but when the homeowner lost the property after the housing market crisis in 2008, it was Valeria who reached out to the bank to figure out their options. But Valeria was also exposed to microaggressions due to her limited English-speaking skills, similar to those Vega ( 2015 ) describes in her ethnography of Latinos in Indiana. When one of her daughters was bullied at school, she repeatedly asked to meet with school officials and, at one point, went above the principal’s head and contacted a district official to assert her rights.

Although, at first, I viewed Valeria and Max’s story as one of pure hardship, as a critical ethnographer, I learned to observe and document the ways in which immigrants also exert their power and agency. Following the dynamics between structure and agency allows researchers to acknowledge their interlocutors’ complex humanity. I never ignore the structural and state violence enacted on undocumented immigrants and their families (Menjívar and Abrego 2012 ), but long-term ethnographic research has also allowed me to witness moments of defiance, resourcefulness, and belonging. Valeria and Max also demonstrated their unwillingness to let their undocumented status overwhelm their family life in the way they worked out their limitations and learned to celebrate their children’s milestones and life events. From baptisms to quinceañeras , I observed the couple attempt to create happy memories for their daughters, which they would record and send back to Mexico. There was a certain level of bravery and defiance in their refusal to diminish their lives, like those Gonzales ( 2016 ) documented while working with undocumented youth. At the same time, this stance was possible only if Valeria and Max remained “under the radar.” They were quickly reminded of their legal vulnerability when encountering the occasional traffic stop or ticket. They tried to stay alert through their social networks and Spanish-language media.

Ethnographic crossings—turning the lens inward

During my research I interviewed two types of mixed-status families—those comprising of undocumented parents and US-citizen children, like Valeria and Max’s, and others comprising an undocumented immigrant married to a US citizen. Contrary to popular belief, most undocumented immigrants have few to no legal options for adjusting their status once they are residing in the United States. In fact, if they leave the country, they are subject to a three-year, ten-year, or permanent bar depending on their length of residency or number of crossings. The 1996 IIRIRA introduced changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act that raised the requirements for the legalization process and made it vastly more difficult for mixed-status families to remain together. Undocumented immigrants found living in the United States without authorization for more than six months are barred from reentry for three years—and for ten years if the duration of residency is more than one year. Undocumented immigrants married to US citizens are eligible for a an “extreme hardship” waiver to lift the three- and ten-year bars. But first, applicants need to prove that a denial of the waiver will cause the US citizen or legal permanent spouse extreme hardship. Proving extreme hardship, however, is not a straightforward task, as waiver requests are often denied. Deciding to begin the process to legalize an undocumented partner’s status is thus often a gamble for many (Gomberg-Muñoz 2016 ; Miranda 2017 ).

Soon after my interview with Valeria and Max, I asked Max’s brother, Carlos, if I could interview him. Carlos was an undocumented immigrant married to a third-generation Mexican American, Julia. They both agreed and asked my partner and me to join them for dinner at a pizzeria. Although I would have opted to visit them in their home, I did not want to impose and agreed to meet them at their preferred place. As had been my experience before with a couple, our exchange was casual and felt more conversational than a one–one-one interview. Carlos talked about his reasons for migrating to the US and the type of work he did at a Greek-owned grocery store. Confidently, Carlos asserted that he was not worried much about his undocumented status and simply wanted to enjoy his family life with Julia and their two daughters. Then I turned to Julia, who was visibly more reserved and talked about her concerns over Carlos’s undocumented status. She explained that she had suggested looking for an immigration attorney, but Carlos refused because he did not want his father-in-law, who had previously expressed reservations over their marriage, to think that he had married her por los papeles (for the papers).

The interview was going well, but then I turned to some hypothetical questions. I asked, “ What would you do if your husband was suddenly deported or was unable to stay in the US?” The question was not meant to be hurtful, as this was a real possibility that many of my interlocutors faced daily. I later learned to be more tactful with my wording and the way I touched on these difficult subjects. More than anything, I wanted to get a sense of whether couples had contemplated this possibility, planned for it, or tried to ignore it all together. Then Carlos, visibly annoyed, turned to me and asked, “What would you do if [your partner] had to go back to Mexico? Would you leave everything to follow him?” His turning the ethnographic lens back on me caught me off guard, even though it was fair. What gave me the right to ask them these personal questions? And would I be willing to ask these of myself? Up until then, Carlos and I had only engaged in friendly casual conversations, and he had agreed to be interviewed because he knew my then undocumented partner. Put on the spot, I responded almost instinctually, “Yes, I would.” But the question lingered with me thereafter. It is not as if I had not thought of it before, but like Julia and Carlos, I was now being asked to talk about it out loud. The researcher had become the researched, and during these “ethnographic crossings” I found it difficult to disentangle my personal circumstances from the issues I was studying. My research was too close to home.

It took us a couple of years before we revisited this conversation. I was invited to a Sanchez family dinner, during which I began talking with Max about the latest immigrant rights mobilizations shown on TV. Max and Valeria began to share with me their latest project in Mexico, as they had begun construction on a new house. They explained that they wanted their daughters to visit their grandparents one day, although it also served as a form of security in case they had to go back. I asked whether or not the changed political climate had shifted their thoughts on returning. Did they now feel the threat of removal more strongly than before? Listening nearby, Carlos joined in our conversation. He stated, “ Si me tengo que ir a México porque me deportaron, pues ni modo. Uno no puede hacer nada. ¿Pero, y mis hijas, y mi esposa? Ellas son de aquí, son ciudadanas. ¿Como les voy a pedir que se vayan a México conmigo?… donde no hay trabajo, ni puede uno pagar la escuela. Si me deportan, hay que hacerle la lucha para regresar. ” (If I have to go to Mexico because they deported me, oh well. I can’t do anything about it. But what about my daughter, and my wife? They are from here, they are citizens. How am I going to ask them to go to Mexico with me?…Where there is no work, and you can’t pay for schooling. If they deport me, one has to make the effort to come back).

Julia, however, promised to follow him wherever he went. “I don’t want to even think of him crossing the border again. With all of the stories you hear. … I’d rather just move to Mexico,” she said. But the fact that the couple has decided not to begin the legalization process suggests that the fear of being forced to live in Mexico for ten years (if the application were denied) is all too great. Coming out of the shadows requires them to place the future of their family in the US at risk, which was something they were not willing to do, just yet.

Following families across borders

During the second phase of my fieldwork, I followed a number of Mexican mixed-status families, as they returned to their rural communities of origin in central Mexico, analyzing the unique challenges men, women, and US-born children faced during their resettlement process in a place they no longer consider home. I analyzed the narratives return migrants created as they were faced with renegotiating their position with the Mexican nation-state, while still dealing with the memories of their lives in the United States and of the family members they left behind.

Sitting in his mother’s kitchen, Brian (a childhood friend of Max and Valeria), described his frustration with his recent return to el rancho —a place he had not seen in over a decade: “I had always wanted to go to el norte . But when I was there, I had no intention of staying. … I don’t know, I guess I always had la ilusion of coming back, but not in the way that I did…or [the way] that they sent me back.” In 2011, Brian had been forcibly removed from the US following an arrest for disorderly conduct in Atlanta, which had been resolved, but the case had still been transferred to ICE. He spent five months in a detention center in Texas until he was sent back to Mexico. In his absence, his wife Susana, who was also undocumented, was unable to keep up with their mortgage payments and household expenses and decided that, rather than spend all of their family savings, she would take their three US-born children to Zacatecas, while they waited for Brian to reunite with them. Once in Mexico, Brian and Susana were faced with a new reality and set of challenges that came with living in a place that was no longer familiar to them.

Even though return migrants were proud of their humble origins, they also admitted that their experiences in the United States—both good and bad—had transformed them in significant ways. It had given them “a new reference point” for how they wanted to live and raise their children. Brian, for instance, explained how his inability to provide for his family in the way that they had grown accustomed to had made him want to go back to the US and support them from afar—not unlike what his father (a circular migrant in the 1970s and 1980s) had done for many years throughout his childhood: “At first, it was hard to get used to the quiet, dusty streets of el rancho , but after a while, it all starts to feel normal again. … But then the weeks go by and the money starts to run out … and your kids start asking you for things they had over there. … You get this knot in your throat, that feeling of impotence … and that’s when you start thinking about crossing again.” The dangers at the border and the cost of crossing—estimated at $5,000, plus the additional “protection tax” to avoid trouble with organized crime—had dissuaded him up until then.

During their initial period of return, a majority of migrants reported feeling a sense of displacement and estrangement about being back in their ranchos . In a focus group, one participant stated, “Today’s Mexico is not the same one that I left behind … and even though I’m from here, ya no me hayo aquí ” (I don’t feel like I belong here anymore). Some migrants described their ranchos as having changed dramatically because of all the men and women who had migrated and now resided in the United States, as only those with papeles would come back during the seasonal festivities. Others quickly noticed how their ranchos ’ economies had stagnated because of the post-NAFTA disadvantaged position farmers held in the production of staple crops like maize and beans.

Indeed, one of the most pressing challenges return migrants faced during their resettlement process was finding stable employment. During these moments, non-migrant family members and local residents became one of the most important resources available to them, especially if they had returned with little savings or had not invested their remittances in land or in the construction of a family home. This was particularly true for deportees, whose abrupt return had given them no time to plan ahead, and as one migrant described it, “We arrived with only the clothes on our backs, and nothing to show for the time spent in the US.” Nonmigrant relatives were able to provide return migrants with a safety net. They offered returnees initial food and shelter in their homes, recommended them to their employers, provided emergency childcare, and gave them extended emotional and moral support.

New challenges in ethnography

No one ever tells you what to expect when you go into the field, especially when the field is one that is familiar to you. Perhaps this is because you do not really know what you will find until you are there—immersed in the daily lives of your interlocutors, listening to their stories and memories, and questioning whether you have become “too close” to maintain healthy boundaries. Engaging in “ethnographic crossings” or blurring the boundaries between the researcher/researched is not necessarily something to avoid or to deem less rigorous than “outsider” research. The reality is that ethnography is a co-constructed experience made possible by the interactions of a researcher and participants, whose lives become intertwined during the period of “the ethnographic present.” Just as a researcher can have “a consequential presence” in the field (Emerson et al. 2011 ), so can interlocutors leave a permanent mark in an ethnographer’s life. I am reminded of this when I read through my fieldnotes and transcripts, or when I feel guilty for not returning to the field as often as I would like. Do they think of me as much as I think of them? Not likely. But I am constantly revisiting our shared time during the writing process, and when I present their narratives to academic audiences.

Although ethnography can be a collaborative effort, one must not underestimate the power differences between researchers and their interlocutors. An ethnographer may try to do their best to adequately and responsibly write about their participants’ social worlds, and the multiple ways in which they create meaning in their lives. Ultimately, however, the written representation and analysis of this experience is still often shared through the lens of the ethnographer. As Emerson et al. ( 2011 ) write, “Ethnographers should attempt to write fieldnotes in ways that capture and preserve indigenous meanings. … They must become responsive to what others are concerned about in their own terms. But while fieldnotes are about others, their concerns, and doings gleaned through empathetic immersion, they necessarily reflect and convey the ethnographer’s understanding of these concerns and doings” (Emerson et al. 2011 , p. 16). Ethnographers can thus still get things wrong. And neither insiders nor outsiders, or those in-between, are exempt from this possibility. We all have to do our due diligence, build toward a “thick description,” and be accountable to the communities with whom we work. In the study of migration, there have been new, exciting collaborations between researchers and undocumented immigrants who have co-designed and co-authored projects, such as Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science (Alonso Bejarano et al. 2019 ), and We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States (Abrego and Negrón-Gonzales 2020 ). These are promising new directions in the field, and I look forward to the possibility of one day co-authoring with my interlocutors.

In recent years, however, ethnographers have also been faced with new challenges in conducting fieldwork in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the method is defined by its immersive quality and layered analysis, one is left wondering whether it is possible to conduct ethnography remotely. For this, one might turn to anthropologists, critical geographers, and other researchers, who have already been doing digital or virtual ethnography. The Center for Global Ethnography at Stanford University, for example, has released a six-part series of interviews with anthropologists who have done remote research. Anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla, for instance, conducted phone interviews with Puerto Rican residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and shared new insights on the importance of linguistic analysis with this type of work.

During the pandemic, I have tried to maintain communication with my key interlocutors, sending messages of support and solidarity. Sadly, Valeria’s mother passed away from COVID-19 complications in Zacatecas in December 2020. Valeria was forced to mourn her mother’s passing from a distance. Friends and family sent messages of support and sympathy through social media, while others sent small amounts of money to help pay for flowers and funeral costs. These rituals of transnational solidarity are not uncommon, but the context of the pandemic and the lengthy period of separation that Valeria has already experienced made her situation even more heartbreaking.

There is much that my interlocutors have taught me about hope and resilience during difficult times. And as an “insider” researcher, I often feel an added weight to speak up about the injustices faced by my community. This sense of accountability, however, is not one that only scholars of color should be expected to bear. The framework of “intersectional methodological approaches” should be considered by all researchers, especially those whose careers have benefited from doing work with and about marginalized communities. No one is exempt.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions, and the guest editors, Marla Ramírez and Sarah Ríos, for their work on this special issue. I would also like to thank fellow ethnographers Micaela di Leonardo, Mariaelena Huambachano, and José Villagran, whose work and friendship inspires and motivates me to keep writing. Most of all, I am indebted to my interlocutors, who have generously let me into their lives and allowed me to share their stories.

is an Assistant Professor of Geography and Chican@ and Latin@ Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. Miranda is an interdisciplinary scholar with research interests in race/ethnicity, gender, (im)migration, citizenship, transnationalism, Latinx families and grassroots organizing in the U.S. and Mexico. Her research focuses on Mexican mixed-status families, examining the ways in which undocumented immigrants, return migrants, and U.S. citizens navigate the legal and social constraints to which their family’s uncertain status exposes them. Her work has received funding from the National Science Foundation (GRF), the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, and Dartmouth’s César Chávez Dissertation Fellowship.

1 All names used are pseudonyms to protect the confidentiality of my interlocutors.

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Methodology

What Is Ethnography? | Definition, Guide & Examples

What Is Ethnography? | Definition, Guide & Examples

Published on March 13, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Ethnography is a type of qualitative research that involves immersing yourself in a particular community or organization to observe their behavior and interactions up close. The word “ethnography” also refers to the written report of the research that the ethnographer produces afterwards.

Ethnography is a flexible research method that allows you to gain a deep understanding of a group’s shared culture, conventions, and social dynamics. However, it also involves some practical and ethical challenges.

What is ethnography used for, different approaches to ethnographic research, gaining access to a community, working with informants, observing the group and taking field notes, writing up an ethnography, other interesting articles.

Ethnographic research originated in the field of anthropology, and it often involved an anthropologist living with an isolated tribal community for an extended period of time in order to understand their culture.

This type of research could sometimes last for years. For example, Colin M. Turnbull lived with the Mbuti people for three years in order to write the classic ethnography The Forest People .

Today, ethnography is a common approach in various social science fields, not just anthropology. It is used not only to study distant or unfamiliar cultures, but also to study specific communities within the researcher’s own society.

For example, ethnographic research (sometimes called participant observation ) has been used to investigate football fans , call center workers , and police officers .

Advantages of ethnography

The main advantage of ethnography is that it gives the researcher direct access to the culture and practices of a group. It is a useful approach for learning first-hand about the behavior and interactions of people within a particular context.

By becoming immersed in a social environment, you may have access to more authentic information and spontaneously observe dynamics that you could not have found out about simply by asking.

Ethnography is also an open and flexible method. Rather than aiming to verify a general theory or test a hypothesis , it aims to offer a rich narrative account of a specific culture, allowing you to explore many different aspects of the group and setting.

Disadvantages of ethnography

Ethnography is a time-consuming method. In order to embed yourself in the setting and gather enough observations to build up a representative picture, you can expect to spend at least a few weeks, but more likely several months. This long-term immersion can be challenging, and requires careful planning.

Ethnographic research can run the risk of observer bias . Writing an ethnography involves subjective interpretation, and it can be difficult to maintain the necessary distance to analyze a group that you are embedded in.

There are often also ethical considerations to take into account: for example, about how your role is disclosed to members of the group, or about observing and reporting sensitive information.

Should you use ethnography in your research?

If you’re a student who wants to use ethnographic research in your thesis or dissertation , it’s worth asking yourself whether it’s the right approach:

Could the information you need be collected in another way (e.g. a survey , interviews)?
How difficult will it be to gain access to the community you want to study?
How exactly will you conduct your research, and over what timespan?
What ethical issues might arise?

If you do decide to do ethnography, it’s generally best to choose a relatively small and easily accessible group, to ensure that the research is feasible within a limited timeframe.

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There are a few key distinctions in ethnography which help to inform the researcher’s approach: open vs. closed settings, overt vs. covert ethnography, and active vs. passive observation. Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Open vs. closed settings

The setting of your ethnography—the environment in which you will observe your chosen community in action—may be open or closed.

An open or public setting is one with no formal barriers to entry. For example, you might consider a community of people living in a certain neighborhood, or the fans of a particular baseball team.

Gaining initial access to open groups is not too difficult…
…but it may be harder to become immersed in a less clearly defined group.

A closed or private setting is harder to access. This may be for example a business, a school, or a cult.

A closed group’s boundaries are clearly defined and the ethnographer can become fully immersed in the setting…
…but gaining access is tougher; the ethnographer may have to negotiate their way in or acquire some role in the organization.

Overt vs. covert ethnography

Most ethnography is overt . In an overt approach, the ethnographer openly states their intentions and acknowledges their role as a researcher to the members of the group being studied.

Overt ethnography is typically preferred for ethical reasons, as participants can provide informed consent…
…but people may behave differently with the awareness that they are being studied.

Sometimes ethnography can be covert . This means that the researcher does not tell participants about their research, and comes up with some other pretense for being there.

Covert ethnography allows access to environments where the group would not welcome a researcher…
…but hiding the researcher’s role can be considered deceptive and thus unethical.

Active vs. passive observation

Different levels of immersion in the community may be appropriate in different contexts. The ethnographer may be a more active or passive participant depending on the demands of their research and the nature of the setting.

An active role involves trying to fully integrate, carrying out tasks and participating in activities like any other member of the community.

Active participation may encourage the group to feel more comfortable with the ethnographer’s presence…
…but runs the risk of disrupting the regular functioning of the community.

A passive role is one in which the ethnographer stands back from the activities of others, behaving as a more distant observer and not involving themselves in the community’s activities.

Passive observation allows more space for careful observation and note-taking…
…but group members may behave unnaturally due to feeling they are being observed by an outsider.

While ethnographers usually have a preference, they also have to be flexible about their level of participation. For example, access to the community might depend upon engaging in certain activities, or there might be certain practices in which outsiders cannot participate.

An important consideration for ethnographers is the question of access. The difficulty of gaining access to the setting of a particular ethnography varies greatly:

To gain access to the fans of a particular sports team, you might start by simply attending the team’s games and speaking with the fans.
To access the employees of a particular business, you might contact the management and ask for permission to perform a study there.
Alternatively, you might perform a covert ethnography of a community or organization you are already personally involved in or employed by.

Flexibility is important here too: where it’s impossible to access the desired setting, the ethnographer must consider alternatives that could provide comparable information.

For example, if you had the idea of observing the staff within a particular finance company but could not get permission, you might look into other companies of the same kind as alternatives. Ethnography is a sensitive research method, and it may take multiple attempts to find a feasible approach.

All ethnographies involve the use of informants . These are people involved in the group in question who function as the researcher’s primary points of contact, facilitating access and assisting their understanding of the group.

This might be someone in a high position at an organization allowing you access to their employees, or a member of a community sponsoring your entry into that community and giving advice on how to fit in.

However, i f you come to rely too much on a single informant, you may be influenced by their perspective on the community, which might be unrepresentative of the group as a whole.

In addition, an informant may not provide the kind of spontaneous information which is most useful to ethnographers, instead trying to show what they believe you want to see. For this reason, it’s good to have a variety of contacts within the group.

The core of ethnography is observation of the group from the inside. Field notes are taken to record these observations while immersed in the setting; they form the basis of the final written ethnography. They are usually written by hand, but other solutions such as voice recordings can be useful alternatives.

Field notes record any and all important data: phenomena observed, conversations had, preliminary analysis. For example, if you’re researching how service staff interact with customers, you should write down anything you notice about these interactions—body language, phrases used repeatedly, differences and similarities between staff, customer reactions.

Don’t be afraid to also note down things you notice that fall outside the pre-formulated scope of your research; anything may prove relevant, and it’s better to have extra notes you might discard later than to end up with missing data.

Field notes should be as detailed and clear as possible. It’s important to take time to go over your notes, expand on them with further detail, and keep them organized (including information such as dates and locations).

After observations are concluded, there’s still the task of writing them up into an ethnography. This entails going through the field notes and formulating a convincing account of the behaviors and dynamics observed.

The structure of an ethnography

An ethnography can take many different forms: It may be an article, a thesis, or an entire book, for example.

Ethnographies often do not follow the standard structure of a scientific paper, though like most academic texts, they should have an introduction and conclusion. For example, this paper begins by describing the historical background of the research, then focuses on various themes in turn before concluding.

An ethnography may still use a more traditional structure, however, especially when used in combination with other research methods. For example, this paper follows the standard structure for empirical research: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion.

The content of an ethnography

The goal of a written ethnography is to provide a rich, authoritative account of the social setting in which you were embedded—to convince the reader that your observations and interpretations are representative of reality.

Ethnography tends to take a less impersonal approach than other research methods. Due to the embedded nature of the work, an ethnography often necessarily involves discussion of your personal experiences and feelings during the research.

Ethnography is not limited to making observations; it also attempts to explain the phenomena observed in a structured, narrative way. For this, you may draw on theory, but also on your direct experience and intuitions, which may well contradict the assumptions that you brought into the research.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

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In book: Encyclopedia of Language and Education (pp.197-206)

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Ethnographic methods are becoming increasingly prevalent in contemporary educational research. Critical Ethnography in Educational Research provides both a technical, theoretical guide to advanced ethnography--focusing on such concepts as primary data collection and system relationships--and a very practical guide for researchers interested in conducting actual studies.

Chapter 1 | 22 pages, what is critical qualitative research, chapter 2 | 21 pages, ontological models and research design, chapter 3 | 11 pages, stage one: building a primary record, chapter 4 | 32 pages, validity claims and three ontologicol realms, chapter 5 | 6 pages, validity requirements for constructing the primary record, chapter 6 | 28 pages, stage two: preliminary reconstructive analysis, chapter 7 | 19 pages, more on reconstructive analysis: embodied meaning, power; and secondary concepts of interaction, chapter 8 | 6 pages, volidity requirements for stage two, chapter 9 | 8 pages, coding procedures congruent with reconstructive analysis, chapter 10 | 11 pages, stage three: dialogical data generation through interviews, group discussions, and ipr, chapter 11 | 7 pages, validity requirements for stage three, chapter 12 | 23 pages, conceptualizing the social system, chapter 13 | 14 pages, stages four and five: conducting systems analysis.

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12 Ethnography

Anthony Kwame Harrison, Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech

Published: 04 August 2014
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Embracing the trope of ethnography as narrative, this chapter uses the mythic story of Bronislaw Malinowski’s early career and fieldwork as a vehicle through which to explore key aspects of ethnography’s history and development into a distinct form of qualitative research. The reputed “founding father” of the ethnographic approach, Malinowski was a brilliant social scientist, dynamic writer, conceited colonialist, and, above all else, pathetically human. Through a series of intervallic steps—in and out of Malinowski’s path from Poland to the “Cambridge School” and eventually to the western Pacific—I trace the legacy of ethnography to its current position as a critical, historically informed, and unfailingly evolving research endeavor. As a research methodology that has continually reflected on and revised its practices and modes of presentation, ethnography is boundless. Yet minus its political, ethical, and historical moorings, I argue, the complexities of twenty-first-century society render its future uncertain.

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Study Protocol
Open access
Published: 28 August 2024

ALLin4IPE- an international research study on interprofessional health professions education: a protocol for an ethnographic multiple-case study of practice architectures in sites of students’ interprofessional clinical placements across four universities

Annika Lindh Falk 1 ,
Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren 1 ,
Johanna Dahlberg 1 ,
Bente Norbye 2 ,
Anita Iversen 2 ,
Kylie J. Mansfield 3 ,
Eileen McKinlay 4 ,
Sonya Morgan 4 ,
Julia Myers 4 &
Linda Gulliver 4

BMC Medical Education volume 24 , Article number: 940 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

The global discourse on future health care emphasises that learning to collaborate across professions is crucial to assure patient safety and meet the changing demands of health care. The research on interprofessional education (IPE) is diverse but with gaps in curricula design and how IPE is enacted in practice.

Purpose and aims

This research project will identify. 1) how IPE in clinical placements emerges, evolves, and is enacted by students when embedded in local health care practices, 2) factors critical for the design of IPE for students at clinical placements across the four countries.

A study involving four countries (Sweden, Norway, Australia and New Zealand) using the theory of practice architectures will be undertaken between 2023 and 2027. The project is designed as an international, collaborative multiple-case ethnographic study, using the theoretical framework of practice architectures (TPA). It will include four ethnographic case studies of IPE, one in each country. Data will be collected in the following sequence: (1) participant observation of students during interprofessional placements, (2) interviews with students at clinical placement and stakeholders/professionals, (3) Non-clinical documents may be used to support the analysis, and collection of photos may be use as memory aids for documenting context. An analysis of “sayings, doings and relatings” will address features of the cultural- discursive, material-economic, social-political elements making up the three key dimensions of TPA. Each of the four international cases will be analysed separately. A cross case analysis will be undertaken to establish common learning and critical IPE design elements across the four collaborating universities.

The use of TPA framework and methodology in the analysis of data will make it possible to identify comparable dimensions across the four research sites, enabling core questions to be addressed critical for the design of IPE. The ethnographic field studies will generate detailed descriptions that take account of country-specific cultural and practice contexts. The study will also generate new knowledge as to how IPE can be collaboratively researched.

Peer Review reports

The global discourse on future health care emphasizes interprofessional collaborative capability as being crucial to meet changing demands on health care systems. These demands are the result of aging populations, increasing inequities in health care outcomes, the increasing number of those with complex health conditions and shortage of health care personnel [ 1 , 2 ]. The World Health Organisation (WHO) [ 2 ] states interprofessional education (IPE) “occurs when students from two or more professions learn about , from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes” (p. 10), signalling that IPE involves interaction between students in learning activities. When the students understand the value of collaborative practice, they are better prepared to become a member of the collaborative practice team and provide better health services. The rationale for IPE, according to WHO [ 2 ] is that health professions should strive to design IPE activities to develop and optimize students’ collaborative competences to prepare them for the above challenges in their future working life [ 2 ], something that is also emphasized in the Winterthur/Doha declaration of Interprofessional. Global 2023 [ 3 ].

Efforts to explore IPE from the international research community are rapidly growing [ 4 ]. Meta-analyses and scoping reviews of IPE initiatives indicate a diverse picture of IPE programmes [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Vuurberg et al. [ 8 ], in their review of research studies on IPE between 1970 and 2017, point to a paucity of research regarding the influence of collaborative work on the development of professional interpersonal skills. In recent years it has been argued that there is a potential to offer IPE in clinical placements thus providing authentic learning opportunities for students in the context of complex health care practices [ 9 ]. Interprofessional learning during clinical placements is a step forward to develop and strengthen students’ interprofessional competencies, professional identity, and confidence [ 10 , 11 ].

Several reviews regarding students’ perceptions about IPE in clinical placements mostly report positive experiences, e.g., increased communication skills and increased knowledge of each other’s roles [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Results also indicate increased abilities with regard to working within a team and improved communication [e.g., 15 – 16 ]. Longer periods of IPE activities seem to strengthen students’ professional identity formation and overcome traditional hierarchical prejudices that can exist in interprofessional teams [e.g., 17 – 18 ]. On the other hand, it has also been suggested [ 19 ] that the lack of attention to power and conflict in the IPE literature might indicate a neglect of the impact of organizational, structural and institutional issues; and thereby might veil the very problems that IPE attempts to solve.

Published examples of IPE activities in clinical placements have covered a wide range of types of activities as well as numbers of hours and days. Initiatives have been developed that extend over a few hours or a day. Students taking responsibility for a team round in clinical placement [ 20 ] or structured interprofessional workshops about falls prevention [ 21 ], are both examples of formal activities arranged during clinical placement periods. A workplace-driven, informal, arrangement where students on uni-professional clinical placement were engaged in interprofessional teamwork for one day [ 22 ] is another example. Interprofessional activities where students practice together for a longer period have been developed and implemented during the past 25 years. Interprofessional training wards where students work together, often for a period of around two weeks, with the overall responsibility for patients’ care, have been a successful activity developed worldwide [ 23 , 24 , 25 ]. The heterogeneity of activities, educational approaches, and outcome measures, makes it difficult to compare between programmes, both at national and international levels [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. To overcome this, the importance of international collaborative efforts to research interprofessional education practices has been emphasized [ 31 ] but to date, such collaborations are scarce. In particular, there is a need for theory-based research and observational methods to discover and understand the basis of interprofessional actions and interactions [ 7 , 32 ]. Moreover, multiple site studies are needed to inform IPE educational design, since the heterogeneity of learning activities and practices varies with the different health care systems. Visser, et al. [ 33 ] in their systematic review, described barriers and enablers of IPE at an individual level but also at a process/curricular and cultural/organizational level of the educational programmes, while Pullon et al. [ 34 ] discussed the importance of paying attention to both individual and contextual factors for sustainable collaborative practice. This indicates a need for research approaches that allow broader perspectives considering not only the experiences of the individual, but also those of the local contexts where IPE is occurring. Recent theories on research on professional learning emphasize the importance of considering the complexity and dynamics of the practices and contexts, i.e., the social and material conditions under which the learning takes place [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. A scoping review highlighted the use of socio-material approaches as a theoretical lens to understand professional learning practices in IPE and interprofessional collaboration (IPC) [ 38 ]. Using a socio-material perspective makes it possible to gain a deeper understanding of how IPE practices emerge within a clinical setting, and furthermore, to develop an understanding of complex situations such as power relationships, human resource shortages in health care, patient safety and more.

In this study, the focus is on identifying how interprofessional collaboration and learning emerge when embedded in clinical practice placements designed for such purposes. The study is designed as an international, collaborative multiple-case ethnographic study. It will involve four sites of health care clinical practice situated locally in Sweden, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand. The multiple case study ethnographic research design [ 39 ] will be used in combination with Kemmis’ theory of practice architectures (TPA) [ 40 ]. This approach will make it possible to identify similarities and differences across the four countries and different sites of IPE.

Context of study

Each country has endorsed the WHO’s global call for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice (IPECP) in different ways, which has been influenced by their national and local health care organization [ 2 ]. The local experience of teaching IPE, how the learning experience is designed, and for how long the students have an IPE clinical placement, varies between the four universities. Linköping University (Sweden) has long-standing experience of an IPE-curriculum including all health education programmes. UiT The Arctic University of Norway has a long history of IPE and builds on selected interprofessional learning activities including 13 health – and social programmes at the most. The University of Otago (New Zealand) has centrally organized IPE with a staged implementation strategy for all health and social services students to undertake IPE learning activities, while the University of Wollongong (Australia) is at an early phase of developing and implementing IPE across a variety of health and social programmes. The different contexts and establishment of IPE at the four sites make up a natural variation suitable for multiple case study research [ 39 ]. A summary of key contextual issues provides a background to each country (Table 1 ).

Theoretical framework – theory of practice architecture (TPA)

We will use a theoretical framework based on Kemmis’ TPA [ 36 , 40 ] (see Fig. 1 ). The TPA is increasingly being used to understand professional practice and the potential to learn in new ways. [ 36 , 37 , 40 ]. The theoretical framework uses the three recognized practice architecture dimensions of cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political, along with their associated elements. The cultural-discursive dimension includes the interactions, discourses, and words (‘sayings’) which make the professional practice understandable; this reveals what to say and think in or about a practice, and what it means. The material-economic dimension enables and constrains how people can act and interact in physical and material space (‘doings’); this reveals the different types of activities and work performed by the professionals within a physical environment and the way these ‘doings’ influence others in the same practice. The social-political dimension describes the relationships that form between individuals and groups (‘relatings’); this reveals how relationships between certain arrangements of professionals develop, their roles, and whether and how relations continue to exist or not [ 44 ]. The emphasis is therefore on the relationships between material arrangements and human actions and what these produce [ 37 ], and that these relationships are more, or less likely to happen, in certain circumstances [ 45 ].

Kemmis´ theory of practice architectures (TPA) [ 40 ] p.97. (with permission from the author)

According to TPA, IPE in clinical placements can be viewed as an organized set of actions and interactions embedded in a professional practice. This means that both human and non-human factors are considered. The focus of the study is the students’ sayings, doings and relatings with fellow students, patients, supervisors, and staff, in the complex dynamic and relational dimensions of practice, i.e. the social and material conditions under which the clinical placement or learning activity is arranged.

The aims of this research project are to identify:

how IPE in clinical placements emerges, evolves, and is enacted by students when embedded in local health care practices,

factors critical for the design of IPE for students at clinical placements across the four countries.

Four research questions (RQ) will be explored:

How do interprofessional clinical placements enable students collaborative learning activities? RQ2. How do students’ sayings, doings and relatings in practice shape interprofessional collaboration and learning?

What challenges do interprofessional clinical practice placements bring to established health care practices?

What lessons from the case studies can inform the global discourse on interprofessional educational practice?

Case study site selection

Each case study site has been purposively selected within each country and across the four countries (see Table 2 ). Purposive selection has been used to ensure maximal variation [ 46 ].

Data collection

Methodology.

Four case studies will be undertaken, one each by the local research groups based in Sweden, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand and using a common ethnographic methodology.

An ethnographic approach focuses on understanding the social processes and cultures of different contexts [ 47 ], and usually comprises a range of qualitative methods. It is recognized as a suitable research method for acquiring knowledge about how practices are arranged and interrelated within naturally occurring physical and social environments, and about the contexts in which activities and knowledge-sharing can take place [ 45 , 48 ].

The initial site visits by each respective country’s local research team will take place in late 2023 and early 2024. At each case site the researcher(s), all connected to health profession education, will use the case study observational research (CSOR) method where non-participant observation guides data collection. In the CSOR method, the direct observations of participants’ behaviours and interactions are given priority and precedence over self-reported forms of data collection, and collection of non-observational data is informed by the analysis of the observational data to enable further investigation of observations [ 49 , 50 ].

Direct observation allows the researcher to see what is occurring rather than having participants describe what they do through interviews. Observations of students will follow the naturally occurring rhythm of interprofessional activities during the day. Examples of such activities are the students planning together their daily work, encounters with patients, deliberations following their work on what seems to be proper treatment and advice for the patient in question, students interactions with staff and supervisors, and their daily reflections on how they have been working together and what they have learned. Each case site is different, and the IPE learning activities is of different length and with different learning outcomes. In each case site, researchers will act as observers of interprofessional students in action and write detailed fieldnotes or record audio memos on the interactions and their context. Field notes will also incorporate the researcher’s reflections “including feelings, actions and responses to the situation” [ 39 ]. Brief informal conversations with students may be conducted during or immediately after the observations if clarity is needed about what has been observed, and these will be recorded in the field notes [ 47 ]. Non-clinical documents may be used to support the analysis, and photographs may be collected for documenting context and to aid recall. These comprehensive observations will facilitate the systematic collection of data while still acknowledging the influence and interpretations of the researcher in the data collection process. The CSOR method will make it possible to gain access to observed actions, interactions and discussions that take place between students (sayings, doings and relatings), and between students and patients, staff, and others.

In each case, the observational data and field notes (and if needed non-clinical documentation and/or photographs for context) will be immediately circulated to the local research team and reflexive feedback provided for inclusion in the analysis. Following this rapid analysis of observational data and guided by what further data is needed or needing to be corroborated, formal interviews will be booked as soon as possible with students, patients, clinical tutors, IPE teachers and others, Formal interviews (audio recorded) will be guided by a template of core questions developed by the research project team. This common template will be augmented by other questions informed by each initial case analysis. Data will be transcribed either selectively or fully; English language translation will occur where data are being analysed for comparative analysis.

Theoretical approach

Data analysis will use TPA [ 40 ] including an analysis “tool kit” [ 51 ]. The tool kit is a theory and method package to investigate practices by the systematic interpretation of the case study data. A “zooming in – zooming out” methodological approach [ 51 ], will make visible details in a specific local practice; “zooming in” allows getting close to the practices being observed (to answer RQ1 and RQ2) and then “zooming out” allows the researcher to expand their scope and look for connections between different practices (RQ3 and RQ4). The connections between practices in the research study will be identified through focusing on the three dimensions of practice architectures: the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political. The agreed tool kit approach will include a layered, purposeful constant comparative analysis [ 52 ], comprising three phases of individual and collaborative activities, using English as the common language. First the systematic collection and analysis of observations and field notes of those observations and other qualitative data by each local research team, will be guided by the theoretical perspective on how students interact in relation to social and material arrangements. Second, the data in each of the four case study sites will be analysed by each local research team and verified locally and collectively; this will lead to site-specific findings. Third, comparisons will be made between the four different sites by cross-checking and developing and refining the interpretations of all the data.

Practical approach

Each country will follow the data collection and analysis process outlined in the methods for their case site and each case site will be analysed separately. Each local research team will have regular meetings to ensure that a reflexive, but uniform approach is undertaken as data is collected. These meetings will also include workshops for collaborative data analysis. Monthly meetings will also be held between the four countries’ project research teams as case data collection and analysis progresses and a similar reflexive process used. This will ensure the analyses of each case follows the same process and will provide assurance of mutual understanding across sites. To enable this, anonymized observational data (and fieldnotes), interview data and photographic or document extracts will be shared, analysed and reviewed in workshops. Following completion of each case study in the four different countries, a cross-case process [ 39 ] will be undertaken. Each local research teams will first have undertaken the primary analysis, combining data from fieldnotes and interview transcript generating preliminary themes to identify the sayings, doings and relatings are emerging and connected in the efforts of collaborate around the patient. As the findings are first collated, observed aspects from students’ sayings, doings and relatings, projects and dispositions will be revealed. As a second layer of analysis, the findings will analytically be connected to practice architectures, such as the cultural-discursive, the material-economic and the socio-political arrangements. The use of a common scheme for how to document the analysis is important for comparative reasons and indicate points for shared analyses across the research teams to consider the respective results, identify similarities and differences across the four sites, and explore any learning principles that might apply to IPE internationally. It is intended for each country to use the same processes to anonymize, catalogue and code the transcribed data. The research agreement also includes a process to enable sharing of selected portions of data and coding software databases using password-protected systems [ 53 ].

Ethical approval and consent

The research group in each country will be responsible for (1) seeking ethical approval for their respective case, (2) gaining consent from each local site to undertake the respective case study, (3) establishing rules for storage of the data. The following countries have received ethical approval to proceed: Sweden (Dnr 2023-02277-01), Norway (No.889163), New Zealand (No. H23/035), Australia (underway).

Establishing trustworthiness

The following processes and definitions proposed by Korstjens and Moser [ 54 ] based on Lincoln and Guba [ 55 ] will be used to ensure trustworthiness in the implementation of this study (Table 3 ).

A timeline for the research project has been established (Table 4 ).

This research project is innovative as it takes an international approach to a globally identified educational challenge regarding methods to design and implement IPE in clinical practice settings. The approach, using case studies in four different countries, will explicitly acknowledge that educational phenomena and learning are contextually bound and situated and that although each country involved is different, common learning can be gained.

It is hoped that the four case studies will lead to new understanding and conceptualization of how IPE can be arranged within and across diverse contexts, languages, and local conditions. Furthermore, the cases may establish some of the challenges interprofessional clinical placements for students may bring to existing or established health care practices.

It is recognized however that while each country’s case will lead to new understanding for that country, it may be challenging to establish cross country learning as the context of each may be very different. Although English language will be adopted for communication, there may be subtle differences in how language is used and understood between English and non-English speaking countries, as well as between English speaking countries.

Taking account of local context as well as developing joint findings will be a challenge. The TPA will give opportunities to identify and analyse how students´ interprofessional clinical activities are embedded in the complex practice of routine health care at a local level within each country, and between countries. The theory will make it possible to capture how the students act in practice and how they relate to each other in clinical placements. It is hoped it will also show how clinical and interprofessional practices are influenced through the three different dimensions (cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political) and if these may construct, enable, or constrain practice work and knowledge-sharing. Possible examples may include: (1) the influence of a discipline’s language or discourse; the way of speaking that forms the framework for understanding themselves and others, (2) the arrangement of a health care setting; the way the environment influences where students can meet and work together (e.g. patient care rooms, rooms used for ward rounds and corridors), and (3) the development of relationships; the way social norms and political influences impact on relationships between different disciplines and groups [ 40 , 45 ]. It is possible when the analysis progresses that the three dimensions referred to above may show nuanced differences between countries which previously have been difficult to articulate and account for.

Undertaking this international collaborative research is important for IPE research going forward. International collaborative research projects in IPE are rare but have been recommended for the consolidation and growth of the IPE research knowledge base [ 31 ].

The design of IPE in clinical placements should be informed by evidence and best practice. This includes using theoretical approaches which can be replicated or further developed, such as the TPA.

This research will advance a model of IPE based on TPA. It will provide new understanding and conceptualization of how IPE can be arranged across diverse contexts and local conditions, but with a common aim to provide collaborative practice-ready graduates able to respond to the increasing healthcare demands of the future.

Therefore, the broader impact of the proposed study is expected to contribute to: (1) the local and international educational IPE community regarding design of IPE in clinical practice, and (2) the international IPE research community regarding how IPE in practice can be collaboratively researched.

Data availability

Selected data will be reported in the Results section but will not be available as datasets.

Abbreviations

Case Study Observational Research

Interprofessional Education

Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice

Interprofessional Collaboration

Theory of Practice Architectures

World Health Organisation

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Acknowledgements

The research team gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the advisor: Nick Hopwood, Professor of Professional Learning, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Open access funding provided by Linköping University. This study is funded by the Swedish Research Council: 2022–03210. The funder had no role in the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of the data; writing of the protocol, or in the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Open access funding provided by Linköping University.

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Authors and affiliations.

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Annika Lindh Falk, Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren & Johanna Dahlberg

UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

Bente Norbye & Anita Iversen

University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia

Kylie J. Mansfield

University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Eileen McKinlay, Sonya Morgan, Julia Myers & Linda Gulliver

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Contributions

ALF, MAD, JD, BN, AI, KM, EM & LG contributed to the conception and design of the overall study. ALF is the overall Principal investigator (PI) and PI of the Swedish case study; AI is the PI of the Norwegian case study, KM is the PI of the Australian case study, EM is the PI of the New Zealand case study. ALF, MAD & JD developed the analysis plan. JD drafted the initial protocol. ALF, MAD, JD, BN, AI, KM, EM, LG, SM & JM revised the protocol critically for important intellectual content and read and approved the final version of the manuscript to be published.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Annika Lindh Falk .

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval.

Sweden: Approved by Swedish Ethical Review Authority. Dnr 2023-02277-01. Each participant will be asked to give signed consent to take part in the case study.

Norway: Approved by Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research, reference number: 889163. Each participant will be asked to give signed consent to take part in the case study.

Australia: Ethical approval is underway.

New Zealand: Approved by the University of Otago Ethics Committee reference number H23/035. Each participant will be asked to give signed consent to take part in the case study.

Consent for publication

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Lindh Falk, A., Abrandt Dahlgren, M., Dahlberg, J. et al. ALLin4IPE- an international research study on interprofessional health professions education: a protocol for an ethnographic multiple-case study of practice architectures in sites of students’ interprofessional clinical placements across four universities. BMC Med Educ 24 , 940 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05902-4

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Exploring How to Construct Buddhist Temples in Sacred Forests: A Critical Ethnography in Northeast Thailand

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Published: 27 August 2024

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Phatcharaporn Sakham ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0002-3822-4950 1 ,
Chalong Phanchan 2 &
Kiattisak Bangperng 2

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While there is a growing body of literature on the Buddhist landscape, we know little about how to construct temples in sacred forests. Hence, this study draws on a qualitative critical ethnographic design to explore how to construct Buddhist temples in sacred forests in northeast Thailand. Purposive sampling was used to conduct interviews with 20 stakeholders in Sakon Nakhon province, the results of which were analyzed using pragmatic horizon analysis (initial codes; developing themes; objective, subjective, and normative categories). The critical ethnographic interviewees identified six themes—monastery construction, values, customs, traditions, cultural settings, and ideology—relating to the construction of Buddhist temples in sacred forests. This study provides evidence of the religion-associated landscapes for constructing Buddhist temples in sacred forests in northeast Thailand.

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Sakham, P., Phanchan, C. & Bangperng, K. Exploring How to Construct Buddhist Temples in Sacred Forests: A Critical Ethnography in Northeast Thailand. DHARM (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-024-00185-w

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PDF Introduction to Critical Ethnography
In this sense, ethnography becomes the "doing"—or, better, the performance--of critical theory. To think of ethnography as critical theory in action is an interesting and productive description. The following quotation from Jim Thomas (1993) underscores this point. He refers to critical theory as "intellectual rebellion.".
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Critical ethnography stems from both anthropology and the Chicago school of sociology. [4] Following the movements for civil rights of the 1960s and 1970s some ethnographers became more politically active and experimented in various ways to incorporate emancipatory political projects into their research. [5] For example, some ethnographers with political agendas for change chose to conduct ...
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"Critical Ethnography is a rare and beautiful synthesis of deft theorizing and principled pragmatics. The complexities of ethnography demand a grasp of both theory and practice, but rarely have they come together so clearly and completely as in this passionately written text.
Critical Ethnography
Critical ethnography is qualitative approach to research that "explicitly sets out to critique hegemony, oppression, and asymmetrical power relations in order to foster social change" (Palmer & Caldas, 2015, p. 1).Ross et al. described CE as a qualitative research method that endeavours to explore and understand dominant discourses that are seen as being the 'right' way to think, see ...
Sage Research Methods Foundations
Critical ethnography is concerned with relations of power and related issues of dis/advantage in wider social, educational, and political contexts. ... One of the key aspects of critical ethnographic research is the focus therein on applying social theory to the research framing and analyses. This approach requires writers and researchers to ...
Critical Ethnographies of Education and for Social and Educational
Giving voice was fundamental of course to all the examples of critical ethnography. It is a minimum requirement in critical research from Gramscian perspective (Gramsci, 1971; Lather, 1986). Yet within it there were also further shifts, from merely listening to people and documenting and analyzing their actions to disclose valuable critical ...
PDF CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY
CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY Critical ethnography is a relatively recent development in social science research methodology. Situated within the broad ethnographic tradition, it reflects many of the characteristics of conventional ethnography. For example, it shares with much ethnography a reliance on the qualitative
Critical Ethnography
Critical ethnography is one of many research approaches which seek to depict and improve workplace care cultures by engaging in collaboration by stakeholders, and where the critical ethnographer works as a facilitator of practice development (PD). Critical ethnography can be used to improve healthcare quality, especially when it is used in ...
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Critical ethnography is a useful methodology when interrogating larger questions of structure and agency, positionality, and social justice scholarship. ... For more than a decade, I have conducted long-term ethnographic research with Mexican mixed-status families in Chicago and return migrants in Zacatecas, Mexico, examining the ways these ...
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This chapter focuses on critical ethnography as a community-based research approach. A civic, participatory, and collaborative project, critical ethnography is rooted in the social justice commitments of critical qualitative inquiry (Denzin & Giardina, 2011; Madison, 2005).
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Ethnography is a type of qualitative research that involves immersing yourself in a particular community or organization to observe their behavior and interactions up close. The word "ethnography" also refers to the written report of the research that the ethnographer produces afterwards. Ethnography is a flexible research method that ...
(PDF) Critical Ethnography
Critical ethnography is a qualitative approach to research that explicitly sets out to critique hegemony, oppression, and asymmetrical power relations in order to foster social change. While all ...
(PDF) Critical Ethnography
Critical ethnography is a relatively recent development in social science. research methodology. Situated within the broad ethnographic tradition, it reflects many of the characteristics of ...
Critical Ethnographies of Education and for Social and Educational
critical ethnographic research in/of education (almost 15-hundred). Just searching QI publications reveals more than 500 titles, such as "When Critical Ethnography and Action Collide" by Ulichny (1997), "Notes on Terrible Educations: Auto/Ethnography as Intervention to How we See Black" by Hill et al. (2019) and Vannini and Vannini
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This chapter introduces ethnography as a distinct research and writing tradition. It opens with a discussion of ethnography's current fashionability within transdisciplinary academic spaces and some of the associated challenges. The next section provides a historical overview of ethnography's emergence as a professionalized research ...
Critical ethnography and its others: Entanglement of matter/meaning
1 INTRODUCTION. Ethnography can be an effective research methodology to help deconstruct, understand, and intervene in the world. It is hailed as one of the most rigorous among the qualitative methodologies, offering a growing variety of approaches, such as critical ethnography, institutional ethnography, rapid ethnography, and visual ethnography, to name a few.
Practices of Ethnographic Research: Introduction to the Special Issue
Methods and practices of ethnographic research are closely connected: practices inform methods, and methods inform practices. In a recent study on the history of qualitative research, Ploder (2018) found that methods are typically developed by researchers conducting pioneering studies that deal with an unknown phenomenon or field (a study of Andreas Franzmann 2016 points in a similar direction).
Critical Ethnography in Educational Research
Ethnographic methods are becoming increasingly prevalent in contemporary educational research. Critical Ethnography in Educational Research provides both a technical, theoretical guide to advanced ethnography--focusing on such concepts as primary data collection and system relationships--and a very practical guide for researchers interested in conducting actual studies.
Critical Ethnography and Research Relationships: Some Ethical Dilemmas
As a qualitative research method, ethnography seeks to know the world from the standpoint of a researcher's social relations. Classic ethnography has been criticized for its aloofness in terms of failing to involve research participants in interpretation, a lack of positionality on the part of the researcher and a focus on description that can lead to the neglect of a social change agenda.
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Critical ethnographers have long challenged positivist notions of research objectivity and the presumed unbiased observer, arguing that one's theoretical lens and positionality influence research design, access, and experiences in the field. Scholars of color have further pointed out the need to examine people's lived experiences through an intersectional framework, acknowledging the ways ...
ALLin4IPE- an international research study on interprofessional health
Four case studies will be undertaken, one each by the local research groups based in Sweden, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand and using a common ethnographic methodology. An ethnographic approach focuses on understanding the social processes and cultures of different contexts [ 47 ], and usually comprises a range of qualitative methods.
Exploring How to Construct Buddhist Temples in Sacred ...
Critical Ethnographic Design. A qualitative method was utilized combining an ethnographic perspective with a critical design (Edmonds & Kennedy, 2017).Madison suggested that an ethnographic design allows the use of criticism (i.e., challenging the status quo) in a system of scientific inquiry, providing insightful description and analysis and scrutinizing hidden agendas, power centers, and ...

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ALLin4IPE- an international research study on interprofessional health professions education: a protocol for an ethnographic multiple-case study of practice architectures in sites of students’ interprofessional clinical placements across four universities

Purpose and aims

Context of study

Theoretical framework – theory of practice architecture (TPA)

Case study site selection

Data collection

Theoretical approach

Practical approach

Ethical approval and consent

Establishing trustworthiness

Data availability

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Exploring How to Construct Buddhist Temples in Sacred Forests: A Critical Ethnography in Northeast Thailand

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