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Ethno: people or folk + Graphy: write/describe something

Ethnography: describing and documenting routine daily lives of people (Fetterman,1998)

ETHNOGRAPHIC DESIGNS ARE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH PROCEDURES FOR DESCRIBING, ANALYZING, AND INTERPRETING A CULTURE-SHARING GROUP’S SHARED PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR, BELIEFS, AND LANGUAGE THAT DEVELOP OVER TIME (CRESWELL, 2007).

SO, WHAT IS CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY?

• Different from conventional ethnography, which is typically descriptive, critical ethnography is tended to be mostly reflective. Critical ethnographers consider historical, political, sociological, and other macro-contextual factors that influence a person’s cultural life.

• Critical ethnographers seek to pose probing questions at the boundaries of ideology, power, knowledge, class, race, and gender.

(Kumaravadivelu, 2008)

• continued …

CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY

• Critical ethnography deliberates poststructuralist notions of unequal power relations and their impact on social constructions of identity.

• Critical ethnographers question received categories, such as non-native, and develop complex portraits of students' identities through extensive interviews, classrooms observations, and examination of course materials and students written work.

(Benesch, 2007)

• Have a culture-sharing group to study (long-term access/portraying)

• Study social issues : power, empowerment, inequity, dominance, repression, hegemony, victimization

• Advocate for the emancipation of marginalized groups (seek to change society)

• Challenge status-quo and ask “Why is it so?”

• Collaborate actively with participants during fieldwork

(Creswell, 2003)

WHEN DOING A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY?

• Emic – inside (Hall, 2003)

• Etic – outside (Hall, 2003)

• Key informant / key actor – individual of group who closely interacts with ethnographer

(Fetterman, 1998)

• Culture - beliefs, values, behaviors of a cohesive people (Morse and Richards, 2002)

JARGONS

• Using primarily observations and interviews (from fieldwork).

• Perhaps collecting other sources during extended time in field/ documentations

(Creswell, 2003)

DATA COLLECTION FORMS

• Analysing data through description of the culture-sharing group; themes about the group.

• Interpreting and making sense of the findings – how the culture works.

(Creswell, 2003)

DATA ANALYSIS STRATEGIES

ADVANTAGES:

• In-depth understanding of a culture amongst a group of people (detailed and more likely valid interpretations)

• Gives a voice to a culture to express their views, which might not otherwise be heard

• Influential in creating an understanding among outsiders

• Also may reveal embedded cultural values that were not obvious to the group (minority group)

(www.cnr.uidaho.edu)

DISADVANTAGES:

• Cumbersome and time-consuming• Possibility that researcher is changing

the natural way a culture behaves by being present

• Inappropriate for analyzing complex environmental problems whose cause-effect relationships are external to the place and time of study (e.g., climate change)

• Difficulty of reconciling constructive engagement with critical reflection

• Can be expensive $$$

(www.cnr.uidaho.edu)

CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS:

A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF ISLAMIC BOARDING

SCHOOL ALUMNI LEARNING ENGLISH IN INDONESIAN

UNIVERSITIES

SO WHAT???

RESEARCH BACKGROUND

• Critical thinking skills are essential abilities in using intellectual tools by which one appropriately analyse, assess, and improve thinking.

• This mode of thinking is certainly flourished in western countries in which people tend to be open-minded, egalitarian, and eager to evaluate ideas presented to them.

(Critical Thinking Community, 2009)

• Islamic boarding school alumni learn English in universities in Indonesia.

WHY ISLAMIC BOARDING SCHOOLS ALUMNI?• Mostly from rural areas.• Scholarship awardees of MORA RI.• 50 : 50 (religion and general subjects).• Pious.• Teacher-centred (follow what Kyai says).• Often considered to lack critical thinking

skills.• Minority in number.• Low GPA.

PROBLEMATIC ISSUES IN ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS

• The limited use of English in Indonesian societies (English is treated as a foreign language).

• Types of assessment – such as group discussion, presentation, and essay writing – require critical thinking skills.

• Students who cannot express ideas in English critically are often considered to be students who have low level academic competence (Setiono, 2000:78).

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The study is mainly designed to find out :

(1) to what extent Islamic boarding school alumni use critical thinking skills to reveal ideas in English,

(2) what kind of critical thinking skills used by the alumni when expressing ideas in English,

(3) whether ways of using critical thinking skills vary among them due to gender differences,

(4) whether ways of using critical thinking skills are various among them due to different socio-cultural backgrounds, and

(5) the trends of their critical thinking skills used.

RESEARCH METHOD

• Combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods is used to analyse the participants’ critical thinking skills.

• Observation, questionnaire, interview, and writing task are chosen as research instruments.

• 100 participants are selected randomly from 2 state universities and 2 private universities.

• The researcher acts as an English teacher during fieldwork.

DATA COLLECTION (1)

• Asking the participants to have conversations with familiar topics (observing and recording the participants’ critical thinking skills / focus group).

• Transcribing, identifying, and classifying the recorded conversations according to the 6 criteria of critical thinking elements: evidence, reason, opposing arguments, conclusion, harmony, and voice (Stapleton, 2001).

• Calculating and presenting the percentage of each category in a table.

DATA COLLECTION (2)

• Furthermore, the writer will ask the students to write and submit argumentative essays with familiar topics.

• The writing features in the essays will be identified and classified based on the 6 criteria of critical thinking elements (Stapleton, 2001).

• The percentage of each criterion will also be counted and presented in a table.

DATA COLLECTION (3)

• Distributing a questionnaire to assess the critical thinking skills elements – using Likert scale (Stapleton, 2002) .

• Conducting an interview to get further clarification of the obtained data.

• Finally, presenting the findings in diagrams to determine the trends of critical thinking skills used by the participants.

DATA ANALYSIS

• Analysing data through description of the culture-sharing group (tendency, shared patterns, and trends of critical thinking skills used).

• Interpreting and making sense of the findings – how the culture of critical thinking skills works.

FINAL STEPS

• Writing the conclusion and implications of the research.

• Giving recommendations to universities on how Islamic boarding school alumni should be fairly treated with regard to their critical thinking skills.

THANK YOU