Doing Child-Centered Ethnography: Unravelling the Complexities of Reducing the Perceptions of Adult Male Power During Fieldwork

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

EmmanuelMayeza¹ 

关键词: ethnographic fieldwork;    child-centered relations;    adult–child power relations;    participant observation;    critical self-reflexivity;    least adult role;    playground;    play;   

DOI  :  10.1177/1609406917714162

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Sage Journals

【 摘 要 】

In this article, I engage the argument of getting around adult power in child-centered ethnographic research by presenting and discussing my experiences as a man researching with South African children in the early years of schooling. I present and discuss the different strategies I used in order to try and disassociate myself from the presumed position of adult male formal power and authority among children who were in my study. In Gender Play, Barrie Thorne coined the term “learning from the children” to describe a critical child-centered ethnographic approach which seeks to engage children as experts in their everyday social lives. However, Thorne acknowledged that when adults seek to learn from the children, the major challenge for the researcher is reducing the perceptions of adult formal power while establishing child-centered relations with the children. While Thorne discussed the issues of gender power in her relationships and interactions with boys and girls during her ethnographic research, this...

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC