What is institutional ethnography - and how do we use it for exploring (shadow) education practices?
Speaker(s):
Bio: Dr Achala Gupta is Lecturer in Southampton Education School at the University of Southampton. Her research focuses on investigating educational issues sociologically. Achala's research interests are education delivery systems (formal and 'shadow') and schooling practices, educational inequalities and (dis)advantages, and students' aspirations and transitions. Achala has published research articles on social class and educational privilege, heterogeneity of middle-class advantage, teacher-entrepreneurialism, as well as timescape, social legitimacy and the shadowing process of private tutoring in India. She has also contributed to the higher education literature by exploring how students are socially constructed in Denmark, England, Ireland, Germany, Poland, and Spain. ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3172-8198 Twitter: https://twitter.com/achalagupta
Abstract:
This session focuses on institutional ethnography - an approach to studying 'the social' - and discusses how this methodological approach can be employed to examine often-hidden aspects of everyday educational practices. The presentation will be divided into two parts. The first part will introduce institutional ethnography, outlining its definition, key characteristics, and critical concepts involving this methodological standpoint. The second part of the presentation will illustrate the specific ways in which it can be used to understand educational practices and processes. Here, the session organiser will draw on her experience of pursuing an institutional ethnography and discuss how it helped her understand and unveil the shadow education system and its practices in relation to formal schooling.