Teaching Ethnographic Data Analysis on Postgraduate Courses in Sociology

Abstract

To appreciate the analytic issues posed by ethnographic data, students must be taught to set those issues against the sociological approach within which the analysis is embedded, for sociology is a pluralistic discipline characterized by many different approaches and the meaning and importance of analytic techniques differ across approaches. Some of the approach-based differences in the analysis of ethnographic data are briefly described. Three different teaching methods and four different objectives in research methods courses are identified. Time constraints on postgraduate courses and the deficiencies of undergraduate research methods training strongly suggest that the teaching method most remote from real research be adopted in pursuit of the most limited objective. Yet, it is argued, this suggestion should be resisted in favour of the teaching method that actively engages students in, and thereby gives them the ability to do, independent research.