Using ethnography to further understandings of learning in everyday settings

Summary: This workshop will give researchers an opportunity to interact with learning scientists employing ethnographic methods. The workshop presenters will use their own ethnographic research—leveraging thousands of hours of fieldwork—as an exemplar in order to describe this methodological approach, share “tricks of the trade, ” and discuss challenges associated with conducting cognitive ethnographic research. Workshop activities include presentations of theory and method, demonstrations, and discussions. Ethnographic methods are used in the learning sciences in order to understand the unique meanings that people associate with their activities and related knowledge (Emerson, 2001). Within the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center, ethnographic research plays an important role in understanding people’s learning processes and pathways and their attendant social and cultural influences. According to Erickson (1986), ethnography and related research methods help us to gain “specific understanding [of a phenomenon] through documentation of concrete details of practice, ” as well as elucidating “the local meanings that happenings have for the people involved in them ” (p. 121). We believe these grounded understandings of how people learn can generate robust theories that are relevant to participants’ lived experiences, as well as suggesting questions for further research. The focus at the LIF