19. Ethnography
Paper
«No One Likes To Get Their Hands Dirty Anymore»: Ethnographic Inquiries into Industrial Apprenticeships in the Knowledge Economy
Johanna Mugler, Antje Barabasch
SFUVET, Switzerland
Presenting Author: Mugler, Johanna
Relying on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper discusses how standard educational distinctions between theoretical and practical knowledge, manual and intellectual work, and technology and people, reinforces the current challenges by those training apprentices in the machine, electrical engineering, and metal industry (MEM) in Switzerland.
Since the 1980s many advanced economies have witnessed a major reorientation in the pattern, form and sources of capitalist economic growth, involving, on the hand a decline in contribution of industrial manufacturing to their gross domestic product (GDP), employment, and trade, and rapid growth of employment, and economic output in the service sector, on the other. These fundamental transformations in the economic structure have been described in terms such as post-Fordism, knowledge economy or information society. The assumption that knowledge work will take the place of traditional industry labor, was finally the key to the sociotechnical imaginary of a de-industrialized society (Haskel & Westlake 2018; Jasanoff & Kim 2015; Moldaschl & Stehr 2010).
A major focus of sociological and anthropological work and education studies was the declining employment opportunities for young working class men in the «new» «knowledge economy» labor markets, where manufacturing declined rapidly over the last four decades and was offshored to lower cost locations (Bourgois 2002; McDowell 2020). Young people with low levels of education and social and cultural capital no longer experience, in many post-industrial countries, a linear transition from school to employment and face increasingly precarious forms of work and self-employment (Sinnons & Smyth 2018). We know, however, little about the relationship of youth, education and industry work in advanced economies, where production remained «at home» (Streckeisen 2008).
This paper presents an ethnographic case study from Switzerland, whose MEM industry sector has also undergone major restructuring since the 1990s (e.g offshoring, automatization, tertiarization), but many internationalized firms still run production facilities in the country and the need for manual labor has not disappeared. It is in labor intensive professions that firms increasingly struggle to recruit apprentices. They least fit, as we argue, with a sociotechnical imaginary of an information society in which labor becomes immaterial and is freed from all forms of material constraints, whether they are technical, economic or societal. This paper explores the attempts of industry actors to make their vocational education more attractive to young people and contrasts these strategies with the lived working experiences of apprentices in the sector.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork between May 2022 and January 2023, in three firms within the Swiss MEM industry. Apprentices, their trainers and coaches were shadowed in different work related contexts (meetings, training workshops; special firm events) over this period of time. Informal conversations and/or semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty apprentices, ten trainers and coaches and three heads of vocational education and their deputies. Semi-structured interviews were recorded and transcribed. Field visits were documented in fieldnotes and analytical notes. Industry actors were also observed at industry wide events such as national skill competitions or meetings of industry association. The aim of this ethnographic fieldwork was to understand what in practice, constitutes the learning culture in apprenticeships within this specific industry sector. The ethnographic material was coded and categorized with grounded theory methods (Clarke 2005; Breidenstein et al 2013).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe reader is presented with a historical overview of the transformation of work and vocational education in the Swiss MEM industry. Thereafter we discuss examples which show the role and meaning of «hands» and «craftsmanship» in apprentices› career choices. We argue that youth, in contrast to the complaints of MEM industry actors, do not object «to getting their hands dirty», but are discouraged to pursue a career in this field by the intense working conditions and the low economic status and lack of prestige these professions enjoy. This analysis is then followed by a second set of examples which demonstrates that an increasing number of apprentices come into these professions, not by personal choice, but because they struggle for intersectional reasons to find apprenticeships in more desired professions that these young people associate mostly with «office» and «IT work». These apprentices often do not fit the narrow conception of the «ideal apprentice» in this industry sector: someone who possesses craft skills, but also a competitive, socially mobile and entrepreneurial self. Failure to perform or low motivation tend to get construed by vocational education trainers as a private psychological propensity or attitude, herby attributing social disadvantage for instance to a lack of self-responsibility. We conclude that firms, which establish a learning culture that questions the standard educational distinctions between theoretical and practical knowledge, manual and intellectual work and between technology and the social might be most successful today in creating an attractive work environment for apprentices. Since operating outside of these historical distinctions goes some way to engender appreciation and therefore value the cognitive demands of physical work, and contribute to an education system where «working with hands» is not perceived as a fallback position.
ReferencesBourgois, Philippe. 2002. Is Search of Respect. Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge University Press.
Breidenstein, George, Stefan Hirschauer, Herbert Kalthoff, Boris Nieswand. 2013. Ethnographie. Die Praxis der Feldforschung. UKV Verlagsgesellschaft.
Clarke. Adele. 2005. Situational Analysis. Grounded Theory after the Postmodern Turn. Sage.
Haskel, Jonathan & Stian Westlake. 2018. Capitalism without Capital. The Rise of the Intangible Economy. Princeton University Press.
Jasanoff, Sheila & Sang-Hyun Kim. 2015. Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago University Press.
McDowell, Linda. 2020. Looking for work: youth, masculinity and precarious employment in post-millenial England. Journal of Youth Studies. 23(8): 974-988.
Moldaschl, Manfred & Nico Stehr. 2010. Wissensökonomie und Innovation. Beiträge zur Ökonomie der Wissensgesellschaft. Metropolis Verlag.
Simmons, Robin & John Smyth. 2018. Education and Working-Class Youth. Reshaping the Politics of Inclusion. Palgrave Macmillan.
Streckeisen, Peter. 2008. Die entzauberte Wissensarbeit, oder wie die Fabrik ins Labor eindringt: ein Forschungsbericht aus der Pharmaindustrie, in: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, H. 1, S. 115-129.
19. Ethnography
Paper
Fostering Revolutionary Spaces in Higher Education: Cultural Practices in the Design Studio
Carol Brandt1, Peter Lundsgaard Hansen2
1Temple University, United States of America; 2University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Presenting Author: Brandt, Carol;
Lundsgaard Hansen, Peter
The university has long desired to be a location for innovation and interdisciplinary scholarship. This desire is especially prominent as entrepreneurship is now part of the mandate for many institutions of higher education (Boldureanu et al., 2020). Yet much of the work being done at the university is hindered by a “silo” mentality of disciplinary isolation and a 19th century model of instruction.
In this paper, we present an anthropological approach to the studio and our ethnographic research on design studios as a radical space for addressing "wicked problems" (Matthews et al., 2022). Wicked problems are vexing because they cannot easily be answered using only one disciplinary perspective. Examples of wicked problems include seaside house designs that can withstand climate change or designs for effective community health systems in an urban pandemic. This paper focuses on the studio as both a place but also a set of tools and teaching strategies for constructing relationships across the disciplinary fields of architecture, art, science, and humanities. We also argue that the studio can potentially be a space where students and faculty can develop epistemic models that often challenge disciplinary knowledge.
The use of the design studio has grown in prominence since Schön (1985, 1987) suggested that studio-based design instruction could be expanded beyond architecture courses to the benefit of students in all fields of study. Design studios tend to be focused around some kind of project, representation, or design (broadly conceived) in which students tackle an ill-defined, open-ended problem through scientific and creative activity (Hoadley & Cox, 2009; Shaffer, 2007). Critique (also called the “crit”) is essential to studio-based learning, as a means to invite students to see their work as iterative, and open to revision. In addition, the crit offers a space for self-reflection and inspiration for continued improvement (Dannels, 2005). Finally, relationship building is particularly important to an interdisciplinary studio; students and faculty with different training and backgrounds work together to develop a common vocabulary and repertoire of resources for addressing their chosen problem. Faculty in the design studio become facilitators of student work, while the students themselves choose the direction of their research and designs.
In order to understand the shared culture and community of practice within the design studio, we use ethnographic methods to examine the relationships among participants. We also interrogate how various elements of the studio's physical features and discursive spaces are leveraged by students and the instructors. We also employ autoethnography to examine our own role as insider/outsider in the cultural processes within the design studio - one author is a design studio instructor and the other is an educational researcher who developed the studio course.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedOur research is located at two universities, one in Denmark and the other in the US. We also collected and analyzed ethnographic data across multiple academic years. Participants include undergraduate students and faculty in an architecture design studio and graduate students and faculty from biology and geography in an interdisciplinary studio. We employed autoethnography (Simpson, 2022) from our own experiences as an instructor in architecture and as an educational researcher in the form of journaling and photojournalism. Other data includes: participant observations, interviews of faculty and students, transcripts of studio discussions, collection of artifacts (student design notebooks and assignments), and online discussion boards. We analyzed the ethnographic data through constant comparative methods that resulted in identifying categories and themes (Miles et al., 2013). We explored these themes through analytical memos. We also focused on how students and faculty actively "positioned" themselves discursively (Davies & Harré, 2000) in the design crits through an examination of the transcripts. In addition we explored how the physical space of the studio was used to provide different epistemic perspectives.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsOur research on design studio, as a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), points to the ways that participants, each with different perspectives, work together to solve real-world problems. Pyrko et al.’s (2017) definition of a community of practice and “thinking together” mirrors our findings in the design studios. In the critiques, the faculty and students think together to improve not only their epistemic models, but also the way the student/expert interacts with the novice/visitor and the model. The emergent practice of considering different ideas in terms of completing the authentic task, requires that participants navigate the various interpretive frameworks each brings to the resolution of the design tensions at hand. Thus, studio space in our research question refers to the space where “thinking together” occurs. Using various physical and digital models as "boundary objects" (Star, 1998) increased the forms of conceptual representations that afforded discussion and epistemic movement. Like Kidron and Kali (2015), the collaborative model building provided opportunities for dialogues that mediated interdisciplinary convergence and promoted a “‘boundary-breaking’ as a mindset that liberates thinking and promotes mutual growth and cross-fertilisation” (p. 14). From these data, we argue for the design studio’s potential to connect scholars from across fields to develop new knowledge to generate interdisciplinary understanding. Students and faculty experienced the design studio as a radical departure from the normative classroom and a revolutionary space that provided them new interdisciplinary perspectives that challenged long held epistemologies.
ReferencesBoldureanu, G., Ionescu, A. M., Bercu, A. M., Bedrule-Grigoruță, M. V., & Boldureanu, D. (2020). Entrepreneurship education through successful entrepreneurial models in higher education institutions. Sustainability, 12(3), 1267.
Dannels, D. P. (2005). Performing tribal rituals: A genre analysis of “crits” in design studios. Communication Education, 54(2), 136-160.
Davies, B., & Harré, R. (2000). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. In B. Davies (Ed.), A body of writing 1990-1999, pp. 87-106. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Hoadley, C., & Cox, C. (2009). What is design knowledge and how do we teach it? Educating learning technology designers: Guiding and inspiring creators of innovative educational tools, 19-35.
Kidron, A., & Kali, Y. (2015). Boundary breaking for interdisciplinary learning. Research in Learning Technology, 23. https://journal.alt.ac.uk/index.php/rlt/article/view/1646/1996.
Lave J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Lidar, M., Lundqvist, E., & Östman, L. (2006). Teaching and learning in the science classroom: The interplay between teachers' epistemological moves and students' practical epistemology. Science Education, 90(1), 148-163.
Matthews, B., Doherty, S., Worthy, P., & Reid, J. (2022). Design thinking, wicked problems and institutioning change: a case study. CoDesign, 1-17.
Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldaña, J. (2013). Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.
Pyrko, I., Dörfler, V., & Eden, C. (2017). Thinking together: What makes Communities of Practice work? human relations, 70(4), 389-409.
Schön, D. A. (1985). The design studio: An exploration of its traditions and potentials. Chicago, IL: International Specialized Book Service Incorporated.
Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Shaffer, D. W. (2007). Learning in design. In R. A. Lesh, J. J. Kaput & E. Hamilton (Eds.), Foundations for the Future in Mathematics Education (pp. 99-126). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Simpson, A. (2022). Self, reflexivity and the crisis of “outsideness”: A dialogical approach to critical autoethnography in education?. In The Routledge International Handbook of Autoethnography in Educational Research (pp. 222-231). Routledge.
Star, S. L. (1998). The structure of ill-structured solutions: Boundary objects and heterogeneous distributed problem solving. In Distributed artificial intelligence, (pp. 37-54).
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning as a social system. Systems thinker, 9(5), 2-3.
19. Ethnography
Paper
Player Perspectives on Competitive Gaming in an Educational Context – State of the Art and Future Directions for Ethnographic Research
Matilda Ståhl, Fredrik Rusk
Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Presenting Author: Ståhl, Matilda
Games today make up a large part of children's and young people's lives. The Domestic Players Barometer (Kinnunen et al, 2022) shows that 80,3% of Finns play digital games and the youngest participants are the group that plays the most. Both pedagogically and commercially developed games can offer the player the opportunity for learning and development (Barr, 2019). Competitive gaming presupposes, among other things, functioning cooperation and good communication skills (Rusk, Ståhl, Silseth, 2020; 2021; Rusk & Ståhl, 2020). However, there is a need to better understand commercial games from a pedagogical perspective (Barr, 2019; Gee, 2007). We suggest ethnographic research as one approach to gain such understanding from a participant’s perspective. Echoing contemporary ethnographic research, we see “a shift from away from ‘traditional’ single-sited anthropological ethnography of education, towards blended ethnography that encompasses research sites that are both physically and digitally constituted” (Tummons, 2022, p. 153). However, such a shift has methodological as well research ethical implications, which is the focus of this abstract with online gaming as the context.
Digital games, which enable new arenas for learning and identity practice, have often been studied through a normative or predominantly technical interest (Bennerstedt, 2013). This tendency comes in part from the lack of analytical approaches to understanding the direct and synchronous digital interaction, not to mention the methods for collecting data (Ståhl, 2021). Therefore, such research cannot describe how children and young people, situationally, interact through digital games, both inside and outside school. There is a need for an empirical scientific basis describing how the interaction actually is done, instead of relying on self-reported results, questionnaires or data on the interaction a posteriori (Meredith & Potter, 2014; Rusk & Ståhl, 2020). Consequently, for video ethnographic research and research on digital social interaction, the next step is to embrace the potential of data collected from the participants' point of view at the very moment of the event.
The video game play data in the project comes from diverse multiplayer games from various offline and online spaces that are part of Finnish social and educational organizations, as well as players’ own gaming outside the activities of said organizations. The data includes screen recordings and other ethnographic data of both more and less competitive gaming from a player perspective. The aim of the current research project “EduGaming - playing together in- and outside of school” (2022-2025) to understand gaming in- and outside of school from a player perspective. The aim of this presentation is twofold: a) to present previous research endeavors on competitive gaming and educationfrom a player perspective as well as b) to discuss possible future directions for participant focused research on co-play in competitive gaming.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn terms of analysis, we employ an applied form of conversation analysis together with an ethnographic approach for collecting and analyzing data from a participant perspective. It includes techniques for documenting social actions and identifying what is characteristic of particular social activities and constructing a collection of situations for comparison between settings and over time (Schegloff, 2007). This approach provides analytical tools for treating different modalities as intertwined and constitutive of the actions performed by the participants. The analysis places social action, learning and identity construction in the temporality and sequentiality of the interaction, and recognizes that the organization of action can involve simultaneous and parallel flows of verbal, embodied, and digital (Goodwin, 2013).
The project responds to the need for new and innovative ways to collect data on digital games. This requires not only the development of existing methods, but also the construction of new tools and processes as well as research ethics. Digital interaction requires methodologically creative and adaptable research, as well as continuous collaboration with the participants (Pink et al., 2016; Spilioti & Tagg, 2017). While it can be a risk and a loss of researcher control, we treat this unpredictability as an opportunity for innovation in our design as well as increased agency and integrity for the participants. Each participant has their own individual social practice in and through the games they play, so our data collection methods must be developed creatively and applied as the fieldwork develops.
To operationalize ethnographic research relying on information and communication technologies results in new research ethical questions on different levels of the project. After all, research ethics is after all both “a discourse, as a body of practices, as a moral perspective, as researcher’s standpoint and as a commitment to doing no harm” (Tummons, 2022, p. 159). Both video and screen recordings are ethically sensitive and therefore require special care and respect. However, based on our previous experience of researching a player perspective in-game, not all practical ethical questions are covered by existing ethical guidelines (Ståhl & Rusk, 2022) and there is a need for in-situ ethical decisions during ethnographic fieldwork (Russell & Barley, 2020). We thereby argue, echoing Pink (2013), in a research project like this, a case-based and process-focused ethical framework can be considered optimal. Thereby, with participants performing screen recordings, they gain more control over data collection (Murphy and Dingwall 2001).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsBased on the current academic discourse and previous empirical studies conducted within the project group, we see three themes that are particularly relevant to future player-centred research in a context of competitive gaming. The themes a) learning, communication and collaboration, b) research ethics and methodology in player-centred research and c) identity, community and diversity.
Gaming can be a gateway to developing technological competence, learning and a sense of belonging. The norms of technology being a masculine form of competence continue to shape the gaming community. This will not only affect who has access to trajectories of technological expertise, but also their access to certain domains and careers. Additionally, these norms will also shape access points for research done within the communities and voices being heard as part of research endeavors such as ours (Rusk & Ståhl, 2023). The norm of the ideal esports player (male, white, heterosexual, and competitive) does not reflect actual player demography. Therefore, it limits which players feel included in the gaming culture, whether this gaming is done in or outside of educational contexts and settings. Therefore, employing games in an educational context is challenging, since many values, that are the norm in gaming culture, are in stark contrast to educational values such as democracy and inclusion. However, excluding commercial games from an educational setting is to refrain from improving skills such as communication and collaboration in a social learning platform that students find authentic and motivating. One could also see the problem through the following lens: what would be a better place to address issues with in-game culture than in educational safe spaces?
ReferencesBarr, M. 2019. Graduate Skills and Game-based Learning: Using Video Games for Employability in Higher Education. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bennerstedt, U. (2013). Knowledge at play. Studies of games as members’ matters. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden).
Goodwin, C. (2013). The co-operative, transformative organization of human action and knowledge. Journal of pragmatics, 46(1), 8-23.
Kinnunen, J., Taskinen, K., & Mäyrä, K. (2020). Pelaajabarometri 2020. Pelaamista koronan aikaan [Player barometer 2020. Playing at the time of corona].TRIM research reports, 29.
Meredith, J., & Potter, J. (2014). Conversation analysis and electronic interactions: Methodological, analytic and technical considerations. Innovative methods and technologies for electronic discourse analysis, 370-393.
Murphy, E., & Dingwall, R. (2001). The ethics of ethnography. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland & L. Lofland, Handbook of ethnography (pp. 339–351). Sage publications.
Pink, S., Horst, H., Postill, J., Hjorth, L., & Tacchi, J. (2016). Digital ethnography. Principles and practice. Sage.
Pink, S. (2013). Doing visual ethnography (3rd ed.). London.
Russell, L. & Barley, R. (2019). Ethnography, ethics and ownership of data. Ethnography, 21 (1). DOI: 10.1177/1466138119859386
Schegloff, E. A. (1996). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. The American Journal of Sociology, 102, 161-216.
Spilioti, T., & Tagg, C. (2017). The ethics of online research methods in applied linguistics: Challenges, opportunities, and directions in ethical decision-making. Applied Linguistics Review, 8(2-3), 163-167.
Tummons, J. (2022), "Ethics and Ethnographies of Education: Current Themes and New Directions", Russell, L., Barley, R. and Tummons, J. (Ed.) Ethics, Ethnography and Education (Studies in Educational Ethnography, Vol. 19), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 151-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-210X20220000019009
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