Abstract
Classroom ethnography refers to the application of ethnographic and sociolinguistic or discourse analytic research methods to the study of behavior, activities, interaction, and discourse in formal and semi-formal educational settings such as school classrooms, adult education programs, and day-care centers. In contrast to quantitative approaches to classroom research, classroom ethnography emphasizes the sociocultural nature of teaching and learning processes, incorporates participants’ perspectives on their own behavior, and offers a holistic analysis sensitive to levels of context in which interactions and classrooms are situated. A spectrum of approaches have developed within classroom ethnography over the past 25 years, varying from purely naturalistic to partly statistical in method, and from focused studies using ethnomethodological, sociolinguistic, and/or discourse analytic methods to studies combining micro-macro analytic concerns within a critical framework.
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Watson-Gegeo, K.A. (1997). Classroom Ethnography. In: Hornberger, N.H., Corson, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4535-0_13
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