PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: DYNAMICS OF ROLE ADJUSTMENT IN A HIGH SCHOOL SETTING
Abstract
School life, like army life, holds a nostalgia for most of us who experienced it, made all the more vivid by its remoteness from our present circumstances. Devoid of many comforts and freedoms that we now enjoy, it is nevertheless apt to be remembered with affection because of the very harshness with which the system worked. It is a singular sub-culture, and it shaped us (but we wouldn't go back). If research is to understand that shaping and that sub-culture, the need for reliable fact and insight requires that someone must go back who can take part, observe, and reflect. The ethnographie method applied to schools presents peculiar difficulties to the researcher in the role of "acting school child." Ahola and Lucas discuss the influences brought to bear on this role by the attitudes of teachers, by the attitudes of a school's students, and by the school's physical environment, and they offer some procedural considerations not previously available in the literature. RÉSUMÉ La vie scolaire, tout comme la vie militaire, est empreinte d'une nostalgie d'autant plus vive qu'elle remonte à si loin. Même si elle était dépourvue des multiples commodités et libertés dont nous jouissons aujourd'hui, c'est avec tendresse que nous l'évoquons en raison même de la rudesse du système. C'est une curieuse subculture qui nous a façonnés en quelque sorte (même si nous ne tenons pas à la revivre). Pour bien comprendre ce façonnement et cette subculture, nous avons besoin de faits dignes de corifiance et de perspicacité et la seule façon est de revivre cette vie pour l'observer et y réfléchir. La méthode ethnographique appliquée à l'école présente des difficultés notables au chercheur qui doit assumer le rôle d'"élève par intérim." Ahola et Lucas discutent des influences qu'exercent sur ce rôle l'attitude des professeurs, l'attitude des élèves et le milieu physique de l'école et ils proposent certaines réflexions procédurales inédites.Downloads
Published
1981-01-01
How to Cite
Ahola, J., & Lucas, B. G. (1981). PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: DYNAMICS OF ROLE ADJUSTMENT IN A HIGH SCHOOL SETTING. McGill Journal of Education / Revue Des Sciences De l’éducation De McGill, 16(001). Retrieved from https://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/7382
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