Whats an Ethnographic Study? I Don't Know, But I'll Soon Find Out

Week 3. The main theme of this week was me collecting my thoughts to try and formulate a coherent response as to what my project was about. Last week I discussed how my project was going to be within the realm of educational sociology, but I did not know what exactly about this field I wanted to look at. I knew/know that I was interested in looking at the social factors that influenced academic atmospheres, but I was not sure of what angle I wanted to take to examine these situations. After some contemplation (and lots of ideas from the class during my presentation), I have determined that I want to narrow my research by focusing on the social interactionist perspective of educational sociology by looking at how different social factors contribute in creating a successful academic atmosphere.  I am still unsure of how exactly I am going to do this (luckily I still have time for that), but I envision myself spending a lot of time in classrooms observing student-teacher and student-student interactions to look at how a high-achieving academic atmosphere develops. Anyways, this is not the main focus of this blog post, so I am going to move onto the different components, or subtopics, of this project.

So when I first read that the focus of this blog post was to list and explain my project’s subtopics, I was a little concerned, because I am not even 100% sure what my exact focus is yet. However, after some beautiful scribbling with a pen and a sheet of paper, I have a basic break down of the different parts of my project.

1.     The first subtopic that I will need to conduct substantial research on is about the field of educational sociology. Currently, I have a basic understanding of what educational sociology is, and what the different sub genres of the field are about, but I need to really delve into the field to understand not only the fundamentals of the subject, but also the history and developments that have been made. This is really crucial to my project because a solid understanding of sociological theories will allow me to provide a lot more insight when it is time for me to conduct my own research.

2.     The second area of focus that I will need to research is about what creates a high achieving academic atmosphere. Although this is the question that I am trying to answer, it is important to understand what past research has said in order to find the gap and make my own contribution.  To help answer this question, I plan on doing a lot of reading on classroom dynamics and popular teaching methods or techniques to understand what generally does or does not work.

3.     The third subtopic which I am going to look into is on cognitive development and learning in children. Although my project is going to be sociological, and not psychological, I still think that it will be helpful to read into how children learn and their cognitive skills develop. This is because when I am observing classrooms, in order to understand how successfully the material is being conveyed, I need to understand how children learn to see how effectively the material is being conveyed. Also, an interesting point of inquiry may be to see if successful academic atmospheres accelerate a child’s cognitive development.

4.     My fourth subtopic is about BASIS itself. Being that I am most likely going to be conducting most of my research at BASIS, I believe that I am going to need to learn as much about BASIS as possible. This includes looking at its philosophy, curriculum requirements, demographics, student and teacher retention rates, teacher selection methods, test scores, etc. I believe that in order to determine what is successful (or not successful) about BASIS, I have to look at anything that I can get access to about BASIS.

5.     My last subtopic, which ties into the previous subtopic, is about ethnographic studies. As Mrs. Haag mentioned, my project is most likely going to be a mini-ethnographic study about BASIS and why it promotes a successful academic atmosphere. Although I currently know nothing about ethnographic studies, I plan to read up on what they are, as well as for the techniques I can use to draw meaning from large amounts of data.

Anyways, at this point, my word count is at almost double the required number, so I am going to stop rambling on, as most of you have probably lost interest by now.  If you did read this far, then you are awesome. Lastly, sorry about the lack of memes this week,  I will try to do better next time. Anyways, adios amigos. (word count: 788)