Mastering the Craft of Research

January 22, 2009 - "It was the first place I presented academic research, and an amazing venue for becoming professionalized into the research world."

The speaker, Penn GSE doctoral student Sarah Lipinoga, is talking about her first experience presenting at an academic conference. That conference — the Ethnography in Education Research Forum — is held annually at Penn GSE and brings together researchers, practitioners, and graduate students to explore the latest issues in education from the perspective of qualitative research, especially ethnography.

Ethnography — a research approach focused on generating rich descriptions of people in social settings, including schools — is as much an acquired craft as it is a learned research method and it is often through ethnographic studies that academics and researchers uncover the most important questions and challenges facing educators today. The Forum is designed to help people who are just starting out in their careers as well as those who have been at it for 30 years and is the premier national conference for scholars engaged in the ethnographic research.

Convened by GSE Professor Nancy Hornberger, the Forum will celebrate its 30^th anniversary in 2009. With two days of presentations, data analysis sessions, and plenary talks, this year's event will focus on "Ethnography for Social Justice." Featured speakers are Shirley Brice Heath, a Brown University professor-at-large; Kris Gutiérrez, a UCLA professor of social research methodology; Brian Street, a professor of language in education at King's College, London; Margaret Himley, an associate professor of English at Syracuse University; and Patricia Carini, co-founder of the Prospect School in Bennington, Vermont.

For young scholars like Lipinoga, the event provides a relaxed and friendly atmosphere in which to learn the ropes. Describing her own experience, she says, "It was a very supportive environment." Lipinoga made her academic-conference debut at one of the nearly 100 sessions offered at last year's Forum. There, she presented findings from a study of a local bilingual service agency that sponsors a preschool for Mexican immigrant children and a parallel family literacy program. In interviews and informal observations, Lipinoga unearthed competing conceptions of what education means to the agency workers and to the parents they serve: education vs. educación.

But the Ethnography Forum does more for beginning researchers than providing a stage for their first presentations before an academic audience. In intensive data analysis sessions, experienced faculty members serve as "consultants," brainstorming with young scholars about the interpretation of their data sets and modeling how ethnographic analysis is done.

At last year's Forum, Penn GSE Professor and Forum Convenor Nancy Hornberger joined fellow GSE faculty Betsy Rymes and Stanton Wortham in one such session, focused on studies of student participation and learning at the pre-school and elementary level. UCLA Professors Frederick Erickson and Kris Gutiérrez and Arcadia Professor Jeffrey Shultz facilitated another that looked at teachers' identities and practices. This year, Gutiérrez, Hornberger, Rymes, and Shultz will again lead data analysis sections, joined by Kathy Howard and David Cassels Johnson.

As for Sarah Lipinoga, she has been continuing her research on new immigrant communities with Penn GSE faculty member Kathy Howard. This year, they have been observing six students as they make the transition into kindergarten — with a particular focus on the home and the strengths and resources that immigrant families bring to their children's learning.

And she'll be back at the Forum, this time her presentation, titled "Lost in Translation," will investigate parent-teacher conferences and the cultural miscommunications that transpire in these settings.