The purpose of this paper is to make visible the processes of learning interactional ethnographic epistemology through preparing to conduct a longitudinal research project. In this presentation we focus on a set of processes and practices involved in preparing to conduct an EU-funded research projectthat has double aims: 1) to help researchers develop competencies in interactional ethnography, an approach new to them, and 2) to conduct empirical research aimed at understanding and improving the preparation of healthcare specialists to work with people with disabilities.

Ethnography, and especially interactional ethnography, is a relatively new research approach in Lithuanian education research (Skukauskaite, Rupsiene, Koro-Player & Beach, 2017). Engaging in a complex and socially significant project and collaborating with expert researchers from the US, provides Lithuanian scholars an opportunity to learn interactional ethnography in the context of a research project. The conduct of any research project involves understanding ontological foundations for the phenomenon studied, epistemological approaches to constructing knowledge about the phenomena studied, methodological decisions that align with theoretical groundings of a chosen research approach, and the use of methods that help researchers construct a set of records to answer research questions (Coe, 2012, Skukauskaite, 2019). Most of the publications on research preparation focus on doctoral education; meanwhile, the learning of research by researchers who participate in collaborative research projects remains understudied. Research collaborations provide a rich ground for understanding what and how researchers learn about research; therefore, to address the gap in the literature and to explore the learning of research by experienced researchers, in this paper we analyze the initial phases of a project that focuses on researcher learning of interactional ethnographic epistemology.

In this presentation, we explore the processes and practices involved in laying these foundations for a longitudinal project guided by the Interactional Ethnographic perspective. Utilizing Spradley’s (1980/2016) developmental research sequence, we constructed domain analyses of the activities and documents that the international team developed to guide the initial phases of the research project. We also explored the opportunities and challenges Lithuanian and US-based scholars faced in teaching and learning interactional ethnography and collaborating in designing a complex project to understand the perspectives of people with disabilities, their families, health care providers, and higher education programs. Analyses revealed the conceptual and practical iterative and recursive processes and practices the researchers undertook as they learned and applied ethnographic principles and prepared to conduct the first phases of the four-year project. 

This research is guided by the Interactional Ethnographic (IE) epistemology (Green et al., 2012), which draws on anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, and critical discourse analysis, to examine how people construct patterned ways of knowing, being, and acting in particular social groups, drawing on particular histories and resources (Kelly & Green, 2019). The social group of focus for this paper is the main research team of co-PIs involved in developing the grant. Two researchers are professors in Lithuania, the third researcher is a native-born-Lithuanian who lives and has a 17-year academic career in the US, and the fourth is an expert US scholar who has given workshops on ethnography in Lithuania and worldwide. The Lithuanian researchers were new to IE, the third researcher has been utilizing the approach over the past 15 years, and the fourth team member was one of the founders of the approach in the 1990s, with roots tracing to the 1970s. Interactional ethnography as a way of thinking and epistemology, not method (Anderson-Levitt, 2006; Atkinson, 2017; Green et al., 2012), enables researchers to use multiple methodologies to study varied aspects of the social world. To understand the processes and practices in which the team of researchers engaged to learn the Interactional Ethnographic principles guiding the conduct of the project, we analyzed the team’s records of activities conducted before the data collection stages of the research began. We also looked at other project-related activities, such as grant-funder workshops, as providing guidelines and impacting the potentials for the conduct of research. Additionally, we analyzed a set of documents the team prepared to guide the research processes of practices and to prepare additional researchers to conduct the project in systematic ways that align with the Interactional Ethnographic logic of inquiry (Green et al., 2012, Green & Bridges, 2018). Records utilized to construct the data for analyses included the team’s written records, the documents the primary research team developed, notes of participant observation, and audio and video recordings of sessions in which the Interactional Ethnographic perspective was introduced and discussed. Analyses included conducting domain and taxonomic analyses of researcher processes, practices and documents as well as discourse analysis of the audio and video records. Contrastive analysis made was also used to make visible the multiple perspectives and understandings of research inscribed in the seminars, documents, and talked into being by the researchers in interaction.

Analysis made visible a complex range of activities in which team members engaged to develop initial understandings of Interactional Ethnographic research epistemology for conducting the project. The activities ranged from informal conversations to formal seminars on Interactional ethnography to translation of documents. We also identified a range of documents the team needed to develop to guide the research practices. These kinds of documents were new to Lithuanian scholars and thus participating in their development created learning opportunities about research foundations and practices. Discourse analysis of recorded conversations among the co-PIs helped us identify a range of challenges and opportunities team members faced in developing and collaborating on the grant. This study makes visible the importance of studying researcher learning in the context of conducting collaborating research and contributes to scholarship about the teaching and learning of research individually, collaboratively and within local and international contexts.

Anderson-Levitt, K. M. (2006). Ethnography. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, & P. B. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of Complementary Methods in Education Research (pp. 279-296). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates for AERA. Atkinson, P. (2017). Thinking ethnographically. Los Angeles: Sage. Coe, R. (2012). The nature of educational research. In J. Arthur, M. J. Waring, R. Coe, & L. V. Hedges (Eds.), Research methodologies and methods in education (pp. 5-14). London: Sage. Green, J. L., & Bridges, S. M. (2018). Interactional ethnography. In F. Fischer, C. E. Hmelo-Silver, S. R. Goldman, & P. Reimann (Eds.), International handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 475-488). New York: Routledge. Green, J. L., Skukauskaite, A., & Baker, W. D. (2012). Ethnography as epistemology: An introduction to educational ethnography. In J. Arthur, M. J. Waring, R. Coe, & L. V. Hedges (Eds.), Research methodologies and methods in education (pp. 309-321). London: Sage. Kelly, G. J., & Green, J. L. (2019). Framing issues of theory and methods for the study of science and engineering education. In G. J. Kelly & J. L. Green (Eds.), Theory and methods for sociocultural research in science and engineering education. New York: Routledge. Skukauskaitė, A. (2019). Constructing transparency in designing and conducting multilayered research in science and engineering education — Potentials and challenges of ethnographically informed discourse-based methodologies. In G. J. Kelly & J. L. Green (Eds.), Theory and methods for sociocultural research in science and engineering education (pp. 234-255). New York: Routledge. Skukauskaitė, A., & Rupšienė, L. (2017). Teaching and learning qualitative methodologies in the context of developing doctoral education in Lithuania. Acta Paedagogica Vilnensia, 39(2), 61-82. Skukauskaitė, A., Rupšienė, L., Player Koro, C., & Beach, D. (2017). Rethinking educational ethnography: Methodological quandaries and possibilities. Editorial introduction. Acta Paedagogica Vilnensia, 39(2), 9-14. Spradley, J. (1980/2016). Participant observation. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc.