Literacy in the community
the interpretation of "local" literacy practices through ethnography
pp. 399-421
in: Paul Smeyers, David Bridges, Nicholas C. Burbules, Morwenna Griffiths (eds), International handbook of interpretation in educational research, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
In this chapter I look at the interpretative practices that are involved when an ethnographer investigates local literacies in home and community settings. I draw on the tradition, from Elizabeth Campbell and Eric Lassiter (Anthropol Educ Q 41(4);370–385; 2010) of collaborative ethnography and the process of doing "reciprocal analysis". I use this mode of analysis to create grounded interpretations which then enabled me to construct a shared epistemological space in which to make sense of these interpretations. I describe ways of interpreting and understanding data which were collaborative and situated within the everyday. Drawing on an ethnographic study of literacy in homes and communities, I developed a situated understanding of the data, employing reciprocal ways of knowing and understanding. I argue for an embodied and intuitive mode of understanding that constructed an interpretative framework from arts practice and ethnography. This framework could be described as a crafting of practice that was situated, contingent and rested on epistemologies and knowledge construction that, in many cases, lay outside of University domains of knowledge.