Mid Sweden University

Purpose:

Little is known about pupils’ informal low-voiced conversations with peers during lessons. The purpose of this paper/presentation is to account for an explorative research design, in applying multiple methods, and particularly video recordings, to generating data that gains access to pupils’ informal communication in the classroom without much disrupting of the natural flow of activities between peers in the classroom.

Ethnographic studies can describe a classroom culture, where the research later on needs to report in a text, in order to restrict multiple meanings and also to tell a story with claims based on evidence (Walford, 2009). When research focuses on pupils’ interaction with peers, a group of pupils is often recorded in another room outside the classroom or tie-clip Microphones are used attached to a few pupils inside the classroom. This facilitates recording one topic at a time (e.g. Melander & Sahlström, 2010), but interferes with the roles in the class and might hinder the pupils’ spontaneous talk with peers. It is of importance to questioning what counts as knowing, doing and being in a group, and who has access to the practices, social constructions and processes (Baker, Green, & Skukauskaite, 2008). This study aimed at approaching the pupils’ flow of interaction and their perspective: who do they turn to, what do they ask peers (instead of asking the teacher), and how do they provide help to peers in the classroom context?  

Participant observations of a class in 8th grade (14 year-olds) at a municipal school, was followed by an innovative staging of three camcorders and several Dictaphones. This was later followed up by interviews with the pupils in the class – aiming at prioritise the pupils’ perspectives and experiences of  collaboration with peers while doing lesson-related assignments. Heath, Hindmarsh and Luff (2010) emphasize the importance of exploring, adjusting the rigging of the gear at a site. This was done in the current study, seeking to obtain a way of recording in the classroom making all the pupils’ voices heard in their informal conversations with peers.  

Result/Contribution:

The staging of the recording devices had two main objectives. Firstly, by focusing on a more quiet part of the classroom where all pupils occasionally went, instead of focusing on particularly selected individuals, all pupils in the class were covered. Secondly, elaborated discreet placing of the recording devices rendered it possible for the pupils to be oblivious of the recordings, which facilitated to explore a natural flow of interaction between peers. The recorded files were later synchronized and transcribed in multiple transcript. However, an inconvenience was that some fragments of the pupils’ low voiced conversations were inaudible while transcribing, due to background sounds in the classroom. The innovative design and passive staging of the cameras created a closeness to the pupil perspective of interacting with peers,allowing recording the pupils’ more spontaneous and authentic conversations while scaffolding peers. This displayed that what teachers might overhear in the classroom differs from the pupils’ lesson related low-voiced conversations with peers.An increased understanding on the natural flow of pupils’ interaction in the classroom practice seen from a pupils’ perspectives might lead to better adapted teaching to meet all the pupils’ needs and prerequisites. The study is of interest from a methodological point of view and could be adapted to other ethnographic research contexts than the classroom.The Regional Ethical Review Board in Umeå/Sweden reviewed the study.   

References:

Baker, W. D., Green, J. L. & Skukauskaite, A. (2008). Video-enabled ethnographic research: a microethnographic perspective. In G. Walford (Ed.), How to do Educational Ethnography. London: the Tufnell Press.

Heath, C., Hindmarsh, J. & Luff, P. (2010). Video in Qualitative Research – Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Melander, H., Sahlström, F. (2010). Lärande i interaktion. Stockholm: Liber.

Walford, G. (2009). For ethnography. Ethnography and Education, 4(3), 271-282.