Urban Classroom Culture and Interaction, 2005-2007

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.This is a qualitative data collection. Taking ethno-linguistic difference and popular culture as two of the most salient features in the urban landscape, this research aimed to produce a new view of contemporary schools and classrooms by: i) charting the inter-animation of ethnic, popular-cultural and educational identities in school-based interaction; ii) linking interactional processes of accommodation, conflict, fusion and refusal to wider processes of cultural and educational stratification. In the process, this research aimed to: iii) build new links between sociolinguistics and cultural studies/sociology; iv) foster a debate among education professionals that is constructively tuned to the reality of contemporary urban classrooms. This research used the methods of ethnographic sociolinguistics. This research focused on a group of 14 and 15 year olds in a comprehensive school in London, and to collect the data, the research team used participant-observation, radio-microphones, interviews, retrospective participant commentary on extracts from the radio-mic recordings, and video recordings. These methods produced an unusually intimate view of everyday life, and the research team also drew on school policy and media documents to set this in a wider context. The project collected these data to explore: exactly how does ethnicity how does ethnicity become relevant during activity at school, and precisely how do students engage with popular culture? Who orients to ethnicity, and who’s involved with popular culture, when and where, and how does this develop over time? How do these processes get reported locally, and what part does the curriculum and public discourse play in all this? In addition, the research team has discussed selections of the data with groups of teachers, using these workshops both to clarify their understanding of teacher perspectives and to gauge the generality of the processes they have uncovered. The audio data from this collection are currently held for preservation only, but the transcripts are available for use.Main Topics:Ethnographic, sociolinguistic, ethnicity, techno-popular culture, education and urban secondary school classrooms.