Roundtable

Monday, 21 August, 9:30 am - 10:30 am
Location: TBA

Authors: Karen Borgnakke (Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen), Sofia Marques Silva (Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto), Vibeke Røn Noer (VIA University College, Department of Nursing), Camilla Kirketerp Nielsen (Department of Large Animal Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen.)

Round table Participants: Kirsti Klette (Norway), Clemens Wierser (Austria), Marianne Dovemark (Sweden), Andrea Raggl (Austria), Fritjof Sahlström (Finland),  Karen Borgnakke (Denmark)

The roundtable address challenges related to the basic ethnographic concepts of `field and context` facing contemporary ethnographic educational research and ethnographic researchers. The roundtable aims to initiate and propel intergenerational discussions among educational empirical researchers from different disciplines and educational settings.  

Traditional ethnographic approaches to educational research takes point of departure in going out into a field (a school, another country, a company, an ethnic minority) for shorter or longer periods of time exploring everyday life or more particular issues using, what can be defined as a classical panoply of empirical methods: Observation, interviews, shadowing, surveys and document collection.
However, during the last decade increased demands of innovation, pedagogical- and organizational development, flexibility, mobility and professionalization have changed both formal and non-formal education worldwide at all levels. With the contemporary changes in educational landscapes, basic ethnographic concepts of `field´ and `context´ are in the center of research reflections. Further, several questions related to ethnographic approaches, the use of - and the interplay between classic educational ethnographic methods and newer ethnographic methods can be raised. The questions relate to the following issues:

• Multi-sited exploration of the learning context(s)
• Research based evaluation of innovative education and learning in practice
• Collaborative research with groups of teachers and students
• Multi-level case studies
• New patterns in communication and interactions
• Video-ethnography and cyber-ethnography  
• Investigations of educational technology and IT in organizational- and pedagogical development
• Rethinking classic classroom research in the light of on-line learning, Game-based learning etc.

The roundtable offers a forum for discussing these issues and questions - assessing both associated possibilities, opportunities, challenges and risks. Short contributions crossing both generations of empirical researchers, contexts, spaces and nations will open the debate.