I am planning on touching on two main themes in my ethnography - how the Madison Children’s Museum utilizes play as a form of education, as well as how the museum is a site for both children and adults to learn. I need to be very clear with my claim, because I am not discussing if/how the parents are learning at the museum, but instead how the employees are learning. I was able to interview multiple employees at the museum, and I have recently had experience learning on-the-job, so most of my material for that portion of my ethnography is in my fieldnotes and my previous experiences (subjective positioning). My outline is definitely not hammered out yet, so I’ll be attempting to finalize that within the next 24 hours. For my additional outside research, I focused on sources centered on play as a means of education. I find the “learn from play” topic very interesting, so it is becoming difficult to keep the focus primarily on my fieldsite. Therefore, my question is:
“How much of my claim should be supported directly by my observations at my fieldsite, and how much can I support primarily with outside research? Should my research on the topic only be used to backup behaviors I observed at the museum?”
I personally feel that you should try to support your claim mostly with your observations and interviews because this is your primary research of your site. However, your secondary research can play an important role in analyzing your observations and in turn, supporting your claim. I think your research should not be used solely to back up your observations but can also used to provide an alternative perspective. For example, if something you observed seems to contradict or oppose something you found doing research, it might be valuable to discuss this in your ethnography. I tend to think that doing this gives the writer more credibility.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Joey - your observations at the fieldsites will be central to your main claim, with the additional support by your research and previous experience (subjective positioning). It will provide a nice discussion if you can formulate them around each other too. It seems you may be able to write some captivating, and information rich narratives from both your observations and previous experience, which can provide a vivid description of what your main claim concerns - the "learn from play" and employee learning/interactions. If you yourself were an employee in a similar environment, you could potentially draw from that too. Essentially, I feel it will be important to connect all these additional research/subjective sources to your initial observations at the fieldsites, which will be pivotal to your discussion of your main claim. Although the fieldwork will be fundamental to the discussion and reappear throughout, I do think you should keep it concise to provide enough room for the other research/theories.
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