The Ethnography of the University:
Using Student Campus-Based Research to Teach Ethnography and Enhance Student Engagement

1. Study Overview and Objectives

The study examined students’ use of institutional ethnography to see: 1. what they learned about ethnography as a practice, or a “way of seeing” (Wolcott 2008) 2. what they learned about the university.

The study was a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) investigation of my Fall 2007 course in ethnographic methods. The course was affiliated with the Ethnography of the University Initiative (see below). Students in my course engaged in ethnographic research on Illinois State University as an institution.

This study documented how students learned to “think institutionally” and how that process effected their understanding and engagement with the university beyond the classroom and after the course. Key results include that the majority of sampled students provided evidence of understanding ethnography as both a way of looking (ie data producing techniques) at the field and as a way of seeing (an interpretive perspective that contextualizes the field) (2008:46). Specifically, sucessful students had to learn to see institutionally and how to formulate suitable questions for ethnographic exploration of their universities. In addition, I also found that, at a minimum, student research on the university led to greater awareness of campus resources and communities (reported by all students); but also provided most students with an expanded and critical understanding of university interests and missions.

2. Problems in Teaching Course-Based Ethnographic Methods

A problem for instructors of undergraduate ethnography courses is how to construct meaningful research experiences for novice students in space of one semester. Instructors hope that students gain more than experience using ethnographic data collection techniques; we want them to reflect on ethnography as a process of inquiry and to be able to articulate the significance and implications of their investigations.

Through ethnography is variously defined within the vast literature on ethnographic methods, it generally consists of participant-observation (or, sustained and direct interaction with a social group in the context of their daily lives) often in combination with in-depth interviewing and other means of data collection. As traditionally taught, the objective of ethnography is to uncover the largely implicit social rules that govern social behavior, or the unique cultural logic of participants in a defined group (Angrosino 2002, Crane and Angrosino 1984, Fetterman 1989, Kutsche 1998, Spradley and McCurdy 1972). However, ethnography is both a way of looking (ie data producing techniques) at the field and a way of seeing (an interpretive perspective that contextualizes the field) (Wolcott 2008:46). Ethnographic data collection techniques are relatively easy to teach; while guiding students to analyze ethnographic data is far more difficult (Burawoy 1998, Jordan and Yamauchi 2008).

The gift of ethnography lies in its fine-grained detailed descriptions of social interactions and settings, but it seems impotent if it is limited to unique case, and cannot be connected to issues and problems larger than the research site. How to link the micro-level data to macro-level forces is a matter of considerable debate (see Burawoy et al. 1998).

My ethnographic methods course was designed to help students:

1) avoid outmoded concept of “cultures,” as bounded, uniform groups;

2) encourage researcher reflexivity regarding guiding assumptions, concepts and categories and how they were learning;

3) engage students in analysis of ethnographic data, without resort to macro-level theories beyond on scope of their first research forays

4) encourage students to reflect on the implications of their research, however partial and preliminary.

The institutional ethnography of EUI helps students take the first steps towards a kind of “middle-range work” that sociologist Mitchell Duneier calls the “extended place method.” The institutional focus provides a framework for critical analysis by directing attention to specific university histories, stories, arrangements, and practices. EUI builds on the convenient natural setting of the campus for student fieldwork but focuses the ethnography on the institution. Students use their ethnographic observations and interview data to interrogate larger institutional contexts and discourses without the necessity of leaping to macro-social forces that lie largely beyond the scope of most semester-long projects. For example, consider the novice ethnographer who decides to study the social world of a residence hall cafeteria. The perceptive ethnographer might note the gendered nature of lunchtime banter, or notice the racial or ethnic self-segregation common in many campus cafeterias. To explain these observations, the ethnographer will likely have to leap between the contained, observable world of the cafeteria to very large explanatory frameworks such as gender and race. Meanwhile, an obvious, middle-range, over-determining characteristic of the social actors in question may recede into the unexamined background – their status as students. A focus on the diners as students brings into light a whole series of explicit codes of conduct (such as university policies or the Student Handbook) and implicit social roles (such as that of coming-of-age youth) to which they are assigned.

3. The Ethnography of the University

The Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI, see link below) fosters student ethnographic and archival research on their own universities. In EUI courses students record their work (such as field notes, reflections, and excerpts from interview transcripts) in a course management system (currently Moodle) in order to capture some of the research process. At the end of the course, students have the opportunity to archive both the processual documents and final research products in an online database (the EUI collection in Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarhip, IDEALS, linked below) so that future students and researchers may use and build on their work. EUI hopes that students who use previous students’ research and then contribute their own work to the archives will see themselves as both producers and users of knowledge. EUI also hopes that by studying their own universities, students will become aware of themselves as university stakeholders and generators of information and analyses that have the potential to challenge received wisdom and change the university. To this end, EUI encourages students to use their research findings and conclusions, however tentative and preliminary, to make recommendations about how their universities might be improved. EUI hopes that this reflection on the university will help students become critical participants in the many institutions that touch their lives beyond college (for more information on EUI see Hunter et al 2008).

EUI encourages a particular way of looking at the university (and other institutions). For the purposes of ethnographic investigation, EUI defines the university as “a highly complex social and cultural institution communicating diverse missions, values and identities” (EUI web site) and challenges students to think beyond their straightforward notion of the university as a place or setting. This is a discursive approach that brings into awareness the kinds of categories, vocabularies, and specialized knowledge used by institutions to organize relations and guide actions.

Beyond the requirement to research the university, I allowed students to propose their own topics. A key teaching effort at the beginning of the course, then, is to help frame an institutional inquiry out of student-defined interests and to guide students to the ways that inquiry might be ethnographically explored. Achieving these two elements often required that I take a heavy hand in shaping the direction of student research.

In the Fall 2007 course, many students chose topics with seemingly straightforward links to the institution, such as a particular student organization or a specific university policy, but even so, students did not immediately grasp how a study of their organization or policy would lead to an analysis of the university at large. For most students, an awareness of the university as institution and agent came about through the research process itself and therefore later in the semester.

The topics of student research projects course could be evenly grouped into three categories:

a) those that examined official registered student organizations (RSOs) (5);

b) those that focused on a defined student population (5);

c) and those that took up specific university policies or practices (5).

Studies of RSOs focused on how and why students become members, the history of the organization, or the organization’s roles on campus. Those projects that focused on student populations included those defined by ethnic or sexual identity (e.g., Latino, LGBT students) or those defined by their status at the university (e.g., nontraditional students). Such projects focused on the challenges these students face by virtue of their identity or status on campus. The specific university policies and practices that students examined included the university’s environmental policy, safety policies and procedures, and academic advisement practices. Three projects that fell out of these categories included a study of “Capture the Flag,” a game students regularly play on the quad; a study of students’ definitions of “community;” and a project about students’ study habits.

Ethnography of the University Initiative

Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

4. Methods and Sample of Students

Of 18 students who completed the Fall 2007 course, 11 students agreed to participate in my study and I invited another student of the class, Cassi Garcia, to be my co-researcher.

Student participants reflected the composition of the course in terms of majors, level, and final course grade: 5 were sociology majors and 6 anthropology majors; 7 participants were seniors and 4 juniors. Interestingly, the students who agreed to participate in this study were not confined to those who received the top scores in the course. Although six participants received a final “A” course grade, two received a “B”, one a “C”, and two participants received “D’s”.

I obtained IRB approval for collection and use of the following data sources:

1) students’ research documents (field notes, course assignments, and final papers) housed in the EUI archives (all but one student archived their work in this publically accessible site);

2) un-graded self-reflection essays that students wrote at the midpoint and the end of fall semester in which I asked students to write about what they were learning or had learned and their thoughts on how the course was going/had gone; and

3) transcripts and notes from interviews with students who were enrolled in the Ethnography course conducted by a student researcher, Cassi, who had herself been a member of the course.

Although I had accompanied all students through the research during the semester, it was only possible for me to understand students’ struggles and concerns through the analysis of themes in their reflection essays and the retrospective interviews. Students’ research documents included field notes, first attempts at analysis and other reporting, but captured only a shallow residue of what I knew to be students’ research efforts. In the learning reflection essays, which I did not read until after the course finished, students more freely expressed frustration and concerns than they had to me in the class or in their research documents. Interviews after the course provided me with a sense of what students took away from the course and their thoughts on the research experience several months after it was completed, unlike the reflection essays which were written as students were still in the grips of turning in final papers and making presentations.

5. Summary of Results

Student Learning about the University:

All sampled students affirmed that they had learned something new about the university, at least in the narrow sense of programs or facts about Illinois State that they had been unaware of previously. At a minimum, students found that the university became a “bigger” place - that is, they all reported that they became more aware campus resources, diverse campus communities, or local issues. For two students in the sample, learning about the university did not appear to have gone beyond this limited perspective. Every other student reported and showed in their projects that they began to, “think about the university in ways [they] never thought of before” (student quote). Specifically, they noted the university’s competing commitments and need to market itself, its enduring history and hierarchy, and the diversity of political interests on campus

Student Learning on Ethnography:

All students came away with some experience using various qualitative research techniques and reported that they valued that experience. As one student noted: “There are just some things we can’t learn [in class] such as: what to take note of while observing, how to take note of that, how to conduct an interview...those are just things I have to learn as I go.” However, I took as evidence of ethnographic thinking how student questions changed throughout their projects. Although all student projects began with straightforward, empirical questions, successful students’ later questions reflected greater attention to meaning and social context. Students began to question various university discourses and diverse stakeholder perspectives. That is, students began asking ethnographic questions. Finally, I found that the reflexive nature of ethnographic research made most students more aware of their own learning (see also Jiménez n.d.)

6. Student Quotes about their Learning…

…about Ethnography

“ethnography is not just one thing, it has many aspects” (Fiona, senior, anthropology)

“The course has taught me to look at my own environment differently and question why things are the way they are– it gave me an ethnographer’s perspective” (Ella, junior, anthropology).

“I learned that no matter how much one reads about note-taking or interviewing, practice is infinitely more valuable. ” (Frank, senior, sociology,)

“[In the ethnography course] you get to research something that you are interested in and it is constantly a reflection on that process. ” (Larry, senior, sociology)

…and about the University

“The university is not the man, and I don’t have to think of it solely as a bureaucracy.” (Lynn, senior, sociology)

“Alot of our projects [show] what the university does to represent safety or represent difference...measures that the university takes to represent itself.” (Kara, junior, sociology)

“I thought that I had a good understanding of the issues that affect safety and so I was surprised through my research to see that there was such a large range in attitudes about the RHCs [Residence Hall Coordinators]. I think that the major issues now are that the university is so focused on keeping money coming into the university that they mask the issues of safety and then expect students to be in charge of their own safety.” (Ellen, senior, anthropology)

“[The university] is almost like this corporation...it works like a machine I gues. [I it see now] more as an institution, I guess, as opposed to an event [in my life]. I think that’s kind of how I saw the university before, and now I see it as a stable institution with stable installments that last for a time; they’ve been here long before me and will exist long after me.” (Frank)

“I now recognize that there are these elements of power struggle within the university and within the hierarchy and stuff like that, so it kind of opens your eyes and makes you realize that you have to deal with the university as a political organization as much as an academic institution.” (Andy, junior, sociology)

7. Final Comments

The benefits of institutional ethnography, as described here, include a broadening of students’ common sense notion of the university as a place into an understanding of universities as complex enduring institutions with diverse, and sometimes competing, interests and objectives. Certainly, the approach used here can be applied to ethnographic investigations of other institutions. Student research on their own universities and colleges has the added benefit of cultivating greater engagement with and critical reflection on the missions, values and practices of those institutions.

References Cited

Angrosino, M. V. (2002). Doing cultural anthropology: Projects for ethnographic data collection. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Burawoy, M., Burton, A., Ferguson, A. A., Fox, K. J., Gamson, J., Gartrell, N., Hurst, L., et al. (1991). Ethnography unbound: Power and resistance in the modern metropolis. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Crane, J. G., & Angrosino, M. V. (1992). Field projects in anthropology: A student handbook (3rd ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Fetterman, D. M. (1989). Ethnography: Step by step. Applied social research methods series. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Hunter, G., Abelmann, N., Cain, T. R., McDonough, T., & Prendergast, C. (2008). Interrogating the university, one archival entry at a time. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 40(5), 40–45.

Jiménez, A. C. (n.d.). Teaching ethnography ethnographically: A final report to the Centre for Excellence in Enquiry-Based Learning. Retrieved July 8, 2008, from http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/uploads/projects/02_A_05.rtf

Jordan, B., & Yamauchi, Y. (2008). Beyond the university: Teaching ethnographic methods in the corporation. Anthropology News, 49(6), 35.

Kutsche, P. (1998). Field ethnography: A manual for doing cultural anthropology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Spradley, J. P., & McCurdy, D. W. (1972). The cultural experience: Ethnography in complex society. Chicago; Henley-on-Thames: Science Research Associates.

Wolcott, H. F. (2008). Ethnography: A way of seeing (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Altamira Press.