Response to Educational Communities and Fieldworking

A) To me, education is learning. It happens everywhere and all the time. No matter how old or young you are, you’re always learning. Like Dewey said, communication is learning. I find it very true that you’re constantly learning from the people around you. You have your formal education (going to class, learning how to do a job that you got hired for) and you have informal education (talking with friends, observing your surroundings). I feel you can’t truly have a formal education without having an informal education. People learn what is acceptable in society from the people around them. When you go to a restaurant you don’t eat with your hands because you’ve learned, probably from your parents, that it is not acceptable to eat with your hands (unless of course it’s “finger food” which you’ve also learned to distinguish). I find that I learn just from observing other people. I learn about how people treat those with disabilities or where to walk to find the bathroom in a new place just from watching other people (or following them in the bathroom case). I like learning in unexpected ways and from unexpected people, like a baby or a dog. We would not have all the theories that we learn in classes without having the informal education we all get daily. I feel like this is an important part of doing an ethnography.

I was thinking of doing a group that is here on campus called Scandisci. I am in Danish and my professor is the head of this group which is made of students from Denmark that study here at the university. I think it would be really interesting to see what they think of things here in the US and try to see things through their eyes.

Other groups I thought of were the UW Italian Club (which I am a part of) or looking at 4^th and 5^th graders at my mom’s school, maybe comparing them because they change so drastically over the summer between 4^th and 5^th grade.

B) Fieldworking: The process of collecting data in a place of interest for study. For example, collecting notes and interviews about people on a hockey team.

Ethnography: a scientific description of a culture. For example, a person goes to a country to study a group of people and reports on their customs, actions, habits, etc.

C) Do you think it will be difficult to weave yourself into your ethnography while still having an outsider’s point of view? What could you do in order to “check” yourself?