Ethnographic Prospects in Teaching and Learning Essay (Critical Writing)

The article represents a distinct persuasion of the author in the enforcement of urban science education by means of more ethnographic and political implications. However, it needs more critical evaluation to state the competence of the research in fitting the real state of things. The methodology of such a kind presupposes the incorporation of cultures, beliefs, and attitudes of children studying at school. However, the researcher brings in her own mite by making survey on the example of homeless children. In this respect solely political approach should be derived from two challenges that are argued in the article.

The first is that there should be rational and correct distribution of teaching and learning resources taking into account the massive character of students learning in one class. The second challenge is that students’ personal preferences as for gender, cultural, ethnical, and religious background provide a scope of methods to be implemented. Both suggestions embody interpretivist-subjective and positivist-objective perspectives. Such a controversial view on the approaches taken in the research complies with the changeability of the social life at the moment.

Critical ethnography with a set of surveys taken helps to convey the gist of the research by keeping up to the idea of great difference among students in their individual prerogatives. This is why the criticism of the article starts at the point where urban schooling is identified to be a source for the initial innermost misunderstanding having been inflicted to subtle conscientiousness of different students. The second reason to state the significance of the research is its practical use which comes out to be based through a sort of questionnaire. Its objectiveness gives more reasons for a researcher as well as an observer to state the importance of implementing an appropriate practice for any among contemporary teachers.

Here one should outline genuinely critical perspective in which the research follows the implementation of main features as of its trustworthiness and cutting edge character. Evidences collected in the article promote a weighed design of how a teacher should perceive the problems going around the lowest strata of students. Thus, for the researcher it was a challenge to cope with urban poverty and make some connections between this social phenomenon and science education.

The outcomes of the research state that cultural, class, and gender differences in the society on the example of Well Springs make students silenced in doing science. The controls in the research are surveyed through the author’s subjective engagement with the reality of children’s living. Here, the analysis touches upon understanding of partiality and relativity of truth as such. On the other hand, the research further encounters a discoverable and rather verifiable character of truth about the case. It is grounded on the particular scientific and statistical approaches taken by the researcher.

Taking a look at the US census for the previous years a researcher motivates an observer to infer that by arranging the proper science education the American society could get out of the “pit” of poverty among children living and studying in America. Critical ethnography which is especially amplified in the study puts observers into the picture of how it is more applicable to involve children from problematic urban settings into the process of science education. Three components of critical ethnography, methods, methodology, and epistemology, are perplexed to signify the state-of-the-art approach in generating knowledge sufficiently.

Hence, as the researcher claims “one’s views of knowledge generation is connected to one’s understanding of the research process” (Barton, 2001, p. 905). Hence, politicizing such an aspect of social life as ethnography would contribute into the area of educational growth throughout urban settings. Science involvement comprises the research prospects and evaluation of student’s self. Thereupon, the researcher should apply to the peculiarities of critical points as of assumptions on education. Barton (2001) outlines critical ethnography as closely related to research as participatory pedagogy.

The researcher provides a scope of evidences which are going around the significance of critical ethnography at large. This is supported by a set of reasons to prove the applicability of ethnographic approach. First, it is vital to admit that primordially education serves o please political interventions inside the society due to setting cultural and traditional values. Second, owing to liberal direction of critical ethnography, it grasps the idea of the struggle for human rights.

In this respect the research should be understood as praxis. Third, ramifications of the research are based on the mutual responsibility on the part of a researcher as well as of researched. The premise of agency is the basis for making such an incorporation of the aforementioned requirement. Fourth, critical ethnography serves as the means to detect an oppressed group (community) of people and provide a genuine research on historical, cultural, and epistemological reasons which led to the state of oppression. Thus, the fourth point draws parallels with the second point.

The research includes facts and assumptions mainly focused on the epistemological features for gaining knowledge effectively. Its main advantages are in its practicality which spreads over the current situation with teaching in urban settings. Releasing power of the ethnographic research to facilitate the quality of teaching and learning is a preliminary objective to be reached out. However, the researcher omitted the empirical implementation of techniques and approaches for stating the causes of disproportionate distribution of knowledge in urban schools.

On the other hand, along with the US census on poverty and stratification of American families it would be an asset to incorporate comparative analysis between the character of critical ethnography in urban setting and in rural areas. There should be an explicit difference to put observers on realizing the significance of critical ethnography for stimulating science education.

It is no wonder the researcher fully addresses to the epistemological approach in finding out the best arguments for critical ethnography as the means for stimulating science education among urban schools. In this respect the interpretivist-subjective assumption is theoretically correct for embracing the gist of the research. The idea is that knowledge is observed to be viable while getting through cultural and social framework. The researcher has chosen the way of finding out the way to explain difficulties and problematic situation in urban schooling. A scope of personal insights has been provided to prove the validity of the initial hypothesis.

Ethnomethodology and ethnography are perplexed in the research into a vortex of rationally weighed elements for encompassing the internal and external validity of the study. The methods which characterize the research in its interpretivist-subjective coloring are pursuant to participatory activities and participatory pedagogy, in particular. Data collected are performed in the form of interviews. Thus, it is more interpreted logically by means of the researcher’s personal assumptions correlated with some philosophical rumination.

The complexity of the setting under analysis provides another challenge for the researcher, namely being engaged with the socially uncovered layers of the society. To say more, the construct of the research relies expressly on the social implications. Hence, the paradigm of the study shows solely social way of conducting the research practically and applying it theoretically.

Denshire, S., 2006, ‘Towards and auto-ethnography of an occupational therapist’s published body of work’, Proceedings of the ACSPRI 2006 Social Science Methodology Conference, December, pp. 1–15.

The study is peculiar for its loose connection to the field of occupational therapy. It is no surprise that this area of professional training along with its responsibilities and main directions gets most of people confused. However, the researcher implements the definition of occupational therapy as more concerned with teaching and anthropology than with therapeutic practice and trends (Denshire, 2006).

The researcher’s intent gets through the variable of ethnographical peculiarities in the workplace. In this respect the problematic point being addressed in the research touches upon auto-ethnography. The significance of applying to some special kind of corpus is seen by the author to be predominant throughout occupational practice in the multinational workspace. Moreover, the position of the researcher is felt in interpretivist-subjective as well as in critical perspectives.

The analysis of the article proves the idea of social and cultural variables impacting the occupational aspects of therapeutic implementation. Thereupon, the criticism of the research encompasses features of ontological and epistemological positions. Providing discourse of the main idea of boarding new corpus in language, the researcher evokes for making writing practices more relied on the ethnographical peculiarities. Realizing occupational therapy as a key human-related profession, the researcher is quite inclined to support arts-based auto-ethnographic inquiry to be loosely concerned with counter-historical practice.

To be honest, this way of discussing the problem lacks particular connection to the economical approach. The researcher is, of course involved into the vortex of changes in the world and seeks to turn it around by means of the findings in the article. In this respect the main intentions of the researcher are aimed at a more reflexive and rich in ethics practical involvement. On the other hand, the problematic corresponds to the features applied to human status, authority, and ethnical identification. Thus, the main point to be addressed in the study is to encompass the influence of auto-ethnography on a reading of occupational therapist’s published body of work critically.

The outcomes of the study fall into the claims that really the implications of autobiographical features in the body of work on occupational therapy impacts conscientiousness of both practitioners and ordinary observers. The figure of the researcher is embedded into the scope of personal feelings and suggestions about the case. Social inequalities are posed to be significant for the researcher, as a critical observer of the real life. Thereupon, the researcher states that auto-ethnography is a means to illustrate life concepts and challenges on the example of personal experience and feelings. In addition, the research showed that connecting professional reality with cultural and personal juxtaposition helps to emphasize the reliability of positive feedbacks on the part of the target audience.

Entitling the emphasized story boards as “Always a writer”, “Being a therapist” and “Becoming academic,” the researcher missed to mention relevant socio-economic features important to validate the reliability of the article at large. This claim comprises the overall research. It also provides a notion of systematic change within the target audience by making vocabulary used in the aforementioned literature more or less applicable for reading.

In fact, it corresponds to the academically correct justification as per researcher’s interpretivist-subjective perspective. Thus, the practical use of auto-ethnographical approach in occupational therapist’s published body of work has been proved to fit into the whole problem.

The above listed interpretation of story boards spreads over the use of “everyday language, metaphor, analogy, heightened ambiguity” (Denshire, 2006, p. 8). On the other hand, arts-based inquiry showcased its practical implementation in terms of writing. Moreover, the analysis of the article highlights that after writing for some publications on occupational therapy an author admits personal careers, academic recognition in bright lights as a precious contribution to the whole professional field.

That constitutes the critical position adored by the researcher. Conversely, it provides claims for the applicability of the article to be used by contemporary specialists in public services. The identification of the main point also touches upon “publication imperatives,” as Denshire (2006, p. 10) remarks. Based on solely personal experience and survey, the study evidenced the validity of the research by dint of different examples of eminent researchers in the same sphere of work.

As a matter of fact, the researcher underlines the gist of composing a survey on current inability of masses to get along well due to some social attributes. Further still, the study infers viable facts and evidences on the importance of embodying personal ramifications in the story board, so that to shake the conscientiousness of a reader. Thus, doing so, a writer wins a huge scope of appreciations. It is practically useful.

However, the main weakness of the research is that its structure determines solely researcher’s speculation in the gist of the study. It lacks appropriate statistical or comparative data to support the study by contrasting its efficiency as opposed to the previous findings. In turn it characterizes the study as being customized for the purpose of the researcher’s self-accentuation of personal vision on teaching and cognitive prospects in occupational therapy.

Nevertheless, the more varied outlook is better to be taken at the future implications of the findings stated in the article. Hence, the researcher has not taken into account the overall connections of the study to the reality of current practice in occupational therapy. On the other hand, it would be applicable to extend it by a bit more assumptions on therapeutic use of linguistic prospects suggested above.

The theoretical approach applicable in terms of the analyzed article comprises the ideas of post-structuralist perspective. In fact, the scope of features that are represented in the study touches upon the subjectivity of the reality in its terms. On the other hand, the educational value of the study crosses the boundaries of typical approaches in the variety of materials proposed for learning but not applying to the target audience.

Nonetheless, the reality of occupational therapy as a cross-relational discipline can be perceived and further acquired by means of discourse. In this respect language is considered to be the main source for improving and accumulating knowledge on a large scale of practical implementation. Knowledge which can be extracted out of the research is discursive at large. It complements each assumption of the researcher to provide logical and empirical grounding for what is, in fact, achieved.

The figure of the researcher is also felt in terms of reducing power relations to the optimal level. It helps the audience understand the strategically important relevance of the study toward perception of truth indicated throughout the article. Several attempts to signify the role of language in genuinely human-related professional domain state the constructive unity of the researcher and the workspace as having juxtaposition by discourse.

Thereupon, the necessity of truth can be felt through partial and perspective features of discourse as such. The researcher also has chosen the method of discursive analysis of materials and texts by other researchers, so that to amplify the usability of the study.

Reference list

Barton, A., 2001, ‘Science education in urban settings: seeking new ways of praxis through critical ethnography’, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Vol. 38, No. 8, pp. 899–917.

Denshire, S., 2006, ‘Towards and auto-ethnography of an occupational therapist’s published body of work’, Proceedings of the ACSPRI 2006 Social Science Methodology Conference, pp. 1–15.