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DOI: 10.1177/0022487104263978 2004; 55; 269 Journal of Teacher Education

Carolyn R. Frank and Frederick L. Uy Ethnography for Teacher Education

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10.1177/0022487104263978ARTICLEJournal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 3, May/June 2004Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 3, May/June 2004

ETHNOGRAPHY FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

Carolyn R. FrankFrederick L. UyCalifornia State University, Los Angeles

Preservice teachers are faced with many challenges when observing elementary classrooms and of-ten jump to critical evaluation based on too little evidence. The authors wondered if preserviceteachers could use observation methods from ethnography and sociolinguistics to delay their evalu-ations and interpretations of classroom practice and see from an insider’s perspective. The authorsdeveloped a study in which 42 preservice teachers learned how to observe through this approach andthen observed 22 elementary teachers with fieldnotes and interviews. Classroom discourse was cen-tral to the research as observers recorded the “talk” during writing instruction. By analyzing thenotes, interviews, and summaries, the authors found that preservice teachers were able to recordtalk and action in classrooms without critical evaluations. They used quotes from fieldnotes asevidence for their interpretations of what was happening. Their summaries included discussions of howdiscourse shapes instructional events and how teachers use talk to organize and manage classrooms.

Keywords: classroom observation; ethnographic fieldnotes and interviews; classroom discourse;preservice teacher observations

One of the requirements in many methodscourses in teacher education is to do classroomobservations. Still in the process of learning theprofession, preservice teachers are faced withmany challenges when asked to observe ele-mentary classrooms. One challenge is that thevarious and complex contexts within class-rooms demand different ways of acting andspeaking (Erickson, 1982; Green & Harker,1982). Another is the rapid decision making ofthe classroom teacher with readjustments to thevarious roles and positions that are required tomeet the individual needs of different students(Dixon, Frank, & Brandts, 1997). These variousfactors make the classroom vulnerable to criti-cism by those who do not understand the com-plexity of what is occurring. The problem thispresents to preservice teachers is that they oftenjump to interpretation and critical evaluationbased on too little evidence and use their own

experience instead of close observation as aframe of reference.

When preservice teachers are asked toobserve classrooms with rating scales, check-lists, coding systems, or counting measures,they are using systems that are predetermined,contain questions from outside the classroombeing observed, and define in an a priori man-ner all events that will happen (Borich, 1999).Teaching and learning as complex phenomenaare seen as narrow categories, and underlyingassumptions and theories that drive theseschemes look as if they are based on simplisticmodels of instruction (when that is not the case).Preservice teacher observations from this per-spective are based on what research says shouldbe happening in classrooms and not on what isactually happening in classrooms. Critics ofthese coding methods point out that observersare less likely to gain access to how classroom

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Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 3, May/June 2004 269-283DOI: 10.1177/0022487104263978© 2004 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education



participants organize and interpret interactions(Edwards & Westgate, 1994).

What other recourses then do we have whenwe ask preservice teachers to observe complexcontexts of teaching and learning inside class-rooms? We address this problem by drawing onanthropological research methods that studythe complexity of classrooms so that preserviceteachers can become different kinds of observ-ers. Observers using a qualitative perspectiveview interactions between teachers and stu-dents inside classrooms as cultural and linguis-tic (Edwards & Westgate, 1994; Florio-Ruane,1990). A qualitative or ethnographic approachassumes that the cultural practices of membersof a social group can be uncovered by listeningto the language and observing the actions(Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995). The purposeof ethnographic and sociolinguistic observationis to understand teaching from the perspectiveof the practitioner and to uncover the socialpractices of the members of the classroom(Green, Dixon, & Zaharlick, 2002). Rather thanobserving classrooms from a predetermined setof tasks that should be happening in class-rooms, an anthropological view of classroomsas cultures understands that what is happeninginside classrooms is socially constructedthrough language (Cazden, 2001; Dixon, Frank,& Green, 1999; Edwards & Mercer, 1987); that is,teachers plan lessons by following curricularguidelines and assessments and strive tobecome effective teachers. However, what isactually happening moment-by-moment, day-by-day inside classrooms is constructed sociallyby teachers and students as they engage in con-versations and particular social practices(Bloome, 1985; Rex, 2001; Santa BarbaraClassroom Discourse Group, 1992).

Our experience with ethnography prior tobecoming teacher educators made us thinkabout using ethnographic methods of observa-tion with preservice teachers who wererequired to observe in elementary classrooms.Our orienting questions for the current studywere the following: Could preservice teachersuse observation methods from ethnographyand sociolinguistics to delay their evaluationsand interpretations of classroom practice?

Would field notes and interviews help pre-service teachers see what was happening insideclassrooms with more understanding of whatteachers were doing? In deciding what kind ofinquiry would answer these questions, wedeveloped a study in which 42 preservice teach-ers learned how to observe throughethnographic and sociolinguistic methods andthen observed 22 teachers in elementary class-rooms. In the current study, we found thatpreservice teachers who used an ethnographiclens during their observation were able to delaycritical evaluation of classroom practices anduse field notes as evidence for their interpreta-tions of what was happening during writinginstruction.

Classroom communication, in the form ofconversation, is central to the researchdescribed in this article. In the current study, weasked preservice teachers to observe classroomsby recording the “talk” of teacher and studentsas they interacted during writing instruction.By making dialogue the focus of their observa-tions, we asked these preservice teachers toinquire into how talk between teachers and stu-dents creates knowledge about writing andhow it might be different in different contexts.We gave them guidelines concerning whatevents to observe, how to see from a member’sperspective, how to take field notes, how tothink about point of view, and how to describewriting instruction by using the language of theclassroom. As Edwards and Westgate (1987)wrote, “While talk is certainly complex, subtle,illusive and often ambiguous, it is about timeeducational research adopted appropriatelycomplex and sensitive forms of enquiry andexplanation” (p. 14).

THEORETICAL FRAME

Ethnography

Within the discipline of educational ethnog-raphy (Green & Bloome, 1997), the currentstudy was grounded in anthropological meth-ods of participant observation (Spradley, 1980)and ethnographic interviews (Agar, 1994;Spradley, 1979). In explaining an ethnographic

270 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 3, May/June 2004



approach to observation for preservice teachers,we drew on Spindler and Spindler’s (1987) 10criteria for good ethnography: observations arecontextualized, hypothesis emerge in situ,observation is prolonged and repetitive, thenative view of reality is attended, the task is toelicit knowledge from informants, questions forinterviews should be generated in situ, a com-parative perspective is present, ethnographersmake what is implicit and tacit explicit to infor-mants, interviewers must not predetermineresponses by the kinds of questions asked, andany form of technical device will be used.

Sociolinguistics

The current study also draws on the theoriesfrom sociolinguistics, or the study of languageuse in educational settings (Bloome & Green,1984; Cazden, 2001; Cazden, John, & Hymes,1972; Green, 1983a; Wilkinson, 1982). Wilkinsonwrote that sociolinguistic “descriptions provideus with a richer understanding of the life inclassrooms, revealing the diversity of studentsand the complexity of communicating in thiscontext” (p. 3). She described three assumptionsthat underlie a sociolinguistic perspective. Thefirst is the concept of communicative compe-tence, which is a belief that knowing how tospeak within classrooms is just as important forstudent success as knowing what to speak(Florio & Shultz, 1979; Mehan, 1979). The sec-ond is that the classroom is a unique communi-cative context as compared with other socialsettings in that it is intended to facilitate the ac-quisition of academic information by students.The third is the view that students differ in theirknowledge of classroom communication thusregulating their chances for academic success.In her study of teaching as a linguistic process,Green (1983b) described why conversations arecritically important to observe within class-rooms. She wrote,

Teaching, therefore, is a creative process; it is a pro-cess of creating environments, of creating activities,of creating situations with children so that childrencan master the academic and social content ofschooling. The vehicle for this creative process iscommunication. (p. 183)

RELATED RESEARCH

Although there have been studies that haveused ethnography with in-service teachers forpurposes of teacher research (Cochran-Smith &Lytle, 1993; Denyer, Florio-Ruane, & Raphael,2001; Hubbard & Power, 1993; Wallat, Green,Conlin, & Haramis, 1981), and studies of class-room students as ethnographers (Beach & Find-ers, 1999; Egan-Robertson & Bloome, 1998),only a few have used ethnography withpreservice teachers for observation (Cochran-Smith, 1991; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1992;Cordova & Neves, 2001; Dick, 1993; Frank,1999). Florio-Ruane (1990) became one of thefirst to guide preservice teachers to observeclassrooms through ethnography by askingpreservice teachers to become anthropologiststo temporarily “hold our interpretations inquestion and to suspend our value judgmentsso that our observations can be more completeand reflective of the people we are studying”(p. 34). She asked students to draw maps of theclassroom, record event logs, and become par-ticipant observers and ethnographic interview-ers. She distinguished between “recording factsabout what is happening (e.g., by writing downword for word what someone says)” andbetween “making interpretations of those facts(e.g., making educated guesses about what theymight mean to the people involved)” (p. 340).

Other studies that look at talk in classroomshave found that instructional conversations aresometimes patterned intentionally by teachersto form classroom cultures that are more inclu-sive (Rex, 2000; Rex & McEachen, 1999), or tohelp students build identities as authors whowrite in workshops together (Frank, 2001), or toillustrate how elementary students can take onidentities of mathematicians, historians, andscientists by engaging in different discoursesand social practices (Lemke, 1990; Lin, 1993;Yeager, Floriani, & Green, 1998). As researchersstudied classroom discourse (Cazden, 2001;Edwards & Westgate, 1994), they discoveredthat there are traditional ways of talking inclassrooms (Mehan, 1979; Wells, 1993) whereteachers ask questions they already know theanswers to and nontraditional ways of talkingthat encourage the acceptance of alternative

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 3, May/June 2004 271



student answers (Hiebert et al., 1996). By look-ing at classroom talk, Rex and her teacher col-leagues (Rex, Murnen, Hobbs, & McEachen,2002) were able to make a claim about howteachers teach through storytelling. Other stud-ies in mathematics classrooms looked at stu-dent understandings through investigating theway mathematic teachers talked (Lampert,1990, 1998).

METHOD AND DESIGN

The site of the teaching college in the currentstudy is located 5 miles from the center of a largeurban city with substantial Hispanic Americanand Asian American populations. Our collegehas a long-standing tradition of serving the lin-guistically diverse cultures of this region andhas one of the most culturally rich and distinctlyvaried student bodies of any university in thenation. When the research took place during theacademic year 2000-2001, all credential candi-dates in our California university who wantedto teach in elementary school were admitted to agraduate program in education that usuallytook 1 to 3 years to complete.

The 42 preservice teachers in the currentstudy (20 in one class and 22 in another) were5% African American, 28% Asian American,31% White, and 36% Hispanic American (ninewere men). At this commuter campus, 67%were working in elementary schools in thecounty as either teachers with emergency per-mits or as instructional aides. The 22 experi-enced, credentialed teachers who were beingobserved in the current study were 23% AsianAmerican, 59% White, and 18% Hispanic Amer-ican (only one man). The number of years ofteaching experience of these teachers rangedfrom 3 to 23 years. All teachers were working inelementary schools near our university andwere engaged in some kind of writing instruc-tion during part of the day that they had identi-fied as “writing workshop” or “writers’workshop.”

The graduate course in the current study(Proseminar in Writing/Language Arts Instruc-tion) met once a week for 4 hours for a 10-weekquarter. For this course, the preservice teacherswere required to do a 14-hour observation in a

classroom where writing workshop was beingtaught. We asked the preservice teachers toobserve a teacher who was using writing work-shop as the instructional method for writingbecause we were focusing on that approach inthe course and because we wanted them to beable to connect the theories presented at the uni-versity with the practice in the field. The assign-ment was to take ethnographic fieldnotes for 4days and to interview the teacher on the 5th day.

Students were taught ethnographic methodsof observation. To do this, we first defined eth-nography and then shared ethnographicfieldnotes taken from our own research anddemonstrated how more evidence can beobtained by writing as much of the talk andaction as possible. We asked them to focus theirnotes on conversations during writing instruc-tion, especially during writing conferences. Weprovided a video for practice and discussed thedifferences between descriptive and interpre-tive fieldnotes or note taking and note making(Chiseri-Strater & Sunstein, 1997). Then theypracticed taking fieldnotes in other classroomsat the university before they observed elemen-tary classrooms (see Frank, 1999 for a detaileddiscussion of classroom observations).

In previous years, when we asked preserviceteachers to take fieldnotes, they tended to writeabout the talk instead of writing the talk as theyheard it. Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) dis-cussed the importance of collecting the speechof the actors in ethnographic notes:

As far as possible, therefore, speech should be ren-dered in a manner that approximates to a verbatimreport; this minimizes the level of inference. . . . Wecan inspect the notes with a fair assurance that weare gaining information on how the participantsthemselves described things, who said what towhom, and so on. When we compress and summa-rize we not only lose “interesting” detail and “localcolour,” we can lose vital information. The actualwords people use [italics added] can be of considerableanalytic importance. (pp. 181-183)

In addition, when observers did not focus onwriting as much of the talk as they could, we no-ticed that they sometimes drifted into interpre-tations. This is normal for all of us when weobserve social situations, and judgments creepinto what we observe. However, because




preservice teachers tended to make evaluationsbased on limited knowledge of teaching andlearning, we wanted the observers to hold off oninterpretations and concentrate on trying tocapture all the talk first. It is difficult enough totry to write down everything teachers say inclassrooms but almost impossible if the ob-server is also writing down interpretations,judgments, or evaluations (Frank, Uy, &Adenika-Morrow, 2000). We wanted thepreservice teachers to concentrate on the lan-guage of the moment and wait a bit to interpretor assess what they had seen and heard.

Preservice teachers were taught to analyzethe fieldnotes and write a summary of theirfindings. To do this, we asked students to rereadtheir notes line by line (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw,1995) looking for three or four ideas “that struckthem” or that they thought were significant. Inbringing forth those ideas, we asked them tosearch for names, events, patterns, or routinesthat would point to certain themes. We askedthem to use the quotes from their fieldnotes asevidence for their interpretations and discussedwith them how rereading them might lead tonew interpretations. While modeling how toanalyze these notes, we drew on our ownresearch fieldnotes and summaries (Uy, 2003).

Parallel to this work were textbook readingsand discussions by the preservice teachersabout writing process, writing assessments, andlanguage arts instruction. Discussions in classranged from the technical and structural aspectsof designing a language arts program (such asliterature focus units, literature circles, themecycles, and reading/writing workshops) to the-oretical discussions of time, choice, response,and ownership as important concepts to under-stand in writing workshop (Atwell, 1998). Theywatched videos of teacher conferences, dis-cussed how the teacher’s language during theseconferences is vital to the formation of a writingenvironment, and engaged in writing groupswhere they responded to each other’s writing.

Data Collection and Analysis

Our data collection and analysis were guidedby our orienting question: Could observers who

use an ethnographic and sociolinguistic lensdelay their interpretations of classroom practiceand see from an insider perspective? We ques-tioned whether they could write fieldnotes thatincluded the talk of the classroom withoutquick interpretations based only on their expe-riences as a frame of reference. Would delayingevaluations help them interpret the observa-tions with understandings that includedteacher and student perspectives? Given thenature of the problem, the kind of data that weasked preservice teachers to collect includedfieldnotes, interviews with in-service teachers,and summaries of the observations. Thepreservice and in-service teachers knew wewere working on this research study and signedrelease forms allowing us to use their notes andsummaries in our report. All names used hereare pseudonyms.

Fieldnotes . Preservice teachers wrotefieldnotes by hand during their observations asthey recorded as much of the talk and actions asthey could (Figure 1). The notes were written inelementary classrooms during a period knownas “writing workshop.” Preservice teachersnoted the time in their fieldnotes when theystarted observing and thereafter noted it peri-odically. Most of the observations were done inpairs in the same classroom on the same days.All 42 were physically present during the obser-vation except two who did their observationfrom a videotape. All notes were in English ex-cept two, which were in Spanish. The fieldworkwas completed over a period of 10 weeksduring the fall quarter of 2000.

Fieldnotes were read before the summariesduring our analysis. We counted the number ofpages and found that the average number ofpages was 26 (Table 1). The larger data sets weremore descriptive of the sites and included moredetails of the talk and actions. The notes wereexamined to see if they were holistic in nature;that is, we wanted to know whether thefieldnotes described who was talking, when,where, under what conditions, and for whatpurposes. We wanted to know whether the con-text of the situation (Erickson & Shultz, 1981;Green, 1983a) was included in the fieldnotes. Toexamine that aspect, we looked at whether the




speaker of the conversation was identified(teacher or student); what the topic of conversa-tion was; whether actions were also included inthe notes; if the time of the day had beenrecorded; if books, writ ing samples,boardwork, or artifacts had been collected; andwhether the observer had described where inthe room the action was taking place.

We also looked at whether the observer wasable to keep the field notes focused on the minute-by-minute classroom events rather than on per-sonal interpretations. Because ethnographicand sociolinguistic perspectives would notimpose an outsider’s description of eventswhile being constructed by members, wewanted to see if the observers would let the par-ticipants name events and practices instead ofassigning names to things from outside theclassroom (such as writing workshop, writer’sworkshop, status-of-class, author’s chair, etc.).

Interviews. The interviews were a combina-tion of formal and informal conversations with

in-service teachers after the fieldnotes were col-lected. Usually the preservice teachers waiteduntil the 5th day to sit down with the in-serviceteachers and ask questions about the observa-tion during recess or lunch. The questions werefocused on what had happened during writingworkshop and why. In some instances, the ques-tions became more personal as preservice teach-ers asked how long teachers had been teachingor why they had decided to teach in elementaryschool. An ethnographic perspective was partof the process of interviewing, and preserviceteachers focused on what they could discoverfrom the informants.

The preservice teachers asked us what ques-tions to ask during the interviews, and althoughwe gave them some ideas (Agar, 1994; Spradley,1979), we cautioned them that their questionswould evolve from the observation, would bedifferent depending on the classroom, andwould depend on their own individual inter-ests. The questions that developed ranged from,“Could you describe a typical day in yourclass?” and “What are all the ways space is usedby the students in the classroom?” to questionsmore focused on writing workshop such as“How did you find out about writer’s work-shop?” and “Where do you get your ideas forwriter’s workshop?” If the preservice teacherused the observation to guide the interview, thequestions were more specific: “What are thespoons for on the homework chart? What arethe orange tickets for? How many journals dothey have?”

Some of the interview questions were pecu-liar to writing workshop. For example, whenone preservice teacher asked, “Is there an areayou perceive as needing improvement in thewriter’s workshop with your students?” the


Figure 1: Christy’s Fieldnotes 11/6/00

Table 1 Criteria That Guided the Analysis of Field Notes

Field Notes Notes

Number of pages of field notes 1099 (average 26)Field notes included conversation (talk) 41 out of 42 yesField notes included interpretations,evaluations, or judgments 33 none; 8 very few

Field notes included map of classroom 28 yesField notes included collection of artifacts 12 yesStudent interviewed teacher 40 yes



teacher answered, “Yes, peer conferencing is anart, but my students don’t see that. They don’tknow enough to ask a good question. They’renot critical enough. They don’t take the peerconferences seriously. Sometimes they justsocialize or fool around” (Margaret). In thisway, preservice teachers collected data frompractitioners concerning theoretical conceptslearned in class. While we expounded on thebenefits of peer conferences for writing revisionat the university, they were hearing practicewisdom from classroom teachers about howpeer conferences may be beneficial but werealso difficult to implement in real classrooms.

These interviews served the purpose of“member checking” with the in-service teacher,which is a method that enables an ethnographerto triangulate or check interpretations withmembers of the culture (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).In this way, the preservice teachers were able todraw on “shared perspectives on what consti-tuted the reality under discussion” (Edwards &Westgate, 1987, p. 72) while they summarizedtheir observations. Most in-service teacherswere unfamiliar with the process of being ob-served with fieldnotes and interviews and weretypically interested in what the preserviceteachers were doing. One preservice teacherwrote,

I did an informal interview with (the teacher) and Itried to speak to her about what I saw daily afterclass. At first she told me I made her very nervousbecause of all the writing I was doing. I showed hermy field notes and informed her that I was only writ-ing down what I saw and not opinions or interpreta-tions. She seemed to be satisfied with my answer anddid not mention the amount I was writing again.(Mary)

Summaries. The summaries were similar to“fieldwork journals” that Hammersley &Atkinson (1995) described as “a running ac-count of the conduct of the research that in-cludes a record not only of the fieldwork, butalso of the ethnographer’s own personal feel-ings and involvement” (p. 192). During theanalysis of the summaries, we each reread theirfieldnotes and then compared them to the sum-maries, taking notes as we read. Afterward, wecame together and discussed whether the sum-

maries had drawn evidence from fieldnotes andinterviews and whether they had made inter-pretations based on that evidence. If thefieldnotes illustrated different conversationalcontexts, we examined whether the preserviceteacher was aware of these different contextsand aware of the differing conversational de-mands for teachers and students for each con-text (Cazden, 2001; Erickson, 1982; Green &Harker, 1982). To investigate this aspect, we re-read summaries to see if they quoted conversa-tions from their notes or interviews, if theyreferred to differences in classroom events, or ifthey used their fieldnotes as evidence for inter-pretations that they made in the summaries.

FINDINGSThe task for teachers and researchers is to make theusually transparent medium of classroom discoursethe object of focal attention. (Cazden, 2001, p. 4)

In the following discussion we illustrate howan anthropological frame provided preserviceteachers a disciplined way of evading too-soon-crystallized judgments, how it helped them useevidence they had collected themselves for theirinterpretations of classroom practices, and howethnographic interviews gave them a way ofcollaborating with experienced colleagues. Wealso provide evidence to show how using asociolinguistic lens helped preservice teacherssee how in-service teachers directed instructionthrough talk, and how talk was used by theteacher to organize and manage the classroom.

Observing Events

In the current study we found that preserviceteachers doing observations from an ethno-graphic perspective were able to writefieldnotes that described what was happeninginside classrooms without jumping to judg-ment. In the notes, we found that 41 preserviceteachers were able to write descriptions aboutwhat was happening during writing instructionwithout making interpretations or evaluationsbased on their own personal perspectives dur-ing the data collection period. Of the preserviceteachers, 33 had not made any interpretations




(Figure 1), and 8 made very few (and these werein the form of questions to be asked of theteacher during the interview rather than evalu-ations, as in Figure 2).

In the following example, we compare fieldnotes from Barry and Valerie to illustrate thispoint. Barry did his observation early in thequarter before the lessons on ethnographic ob-servations. His fieldnotes show that he did notrecord the talk of the teacher or children and, be-cause he was not recording conversations con-cretely, illustrate how he failed to learn as muchas possible by not collecting enough evidence.He filtered what was heard through his own in-terpretation and then summarized it. We com-pared his notes, taken on his last day ofobservation, with the fieldnotes of Valerie(taken in the same classroom) who was just be-ginning her observation and who had com-pleted the lessons on ethnography. It can beseen, as these two sets of fieldnotes are com-pared side-by-side during author’s chair, thatwhile Barry was compressing and writingabout the talk, Valerie was recording as much ofthe words that the teacher and children used aspossible. She was collecting more informationfrom the classroom to use as evidence for her in-terpretation. Barry’s field notes during one mo-ment in this classroom (9:50 a.m.) contain oneline, whereas Valerie’s contain 18 lines.

Barry’s Field notes for 9:50 a.m. 10/17 (Megan’s Au-thor’s Chair):

9:50: During Author’s chair, I notice the papers have be-come more descriptive

Valerie’s Field notes for 9:50 a.m. 10/17 (Megan’s Au-thor’s Chair):

9:50: Teacher rings bell “Okay it is author’s chair time”Students get up push in chairs and take their composi-

tions along with them to the rug area. Teacher pullsout a log and calls out a name of student and title ofstory.

“Your Done!” a student remarks.S—Comments: I like when you said . . . I like your

brother’s curly hair.S— Questions: How old are your brothers? What are

the names of your parents and brothers?Teacher: What is a name going to do for you? Names are

important to inform us. Character “Viola Swamp”ugly name. Think of a swamp is ugly and dirty. Wellthe character plays a . . . that is mean and ugly. Sothat’s why names are important.

Comparing these two sets of fieldnotes illus-trates that writing as much of the classroom talkas possible allows preservice teachers opportu-nities to see from the teacher’s perspective. Ob-servers who use ethnographic techniques seeinformants who are engaged in “cultural ritu-als” and in doing so are able to see what is actu-ally happening and not what is assumed ishappening. The difference between writingabout the talk and writing the talk verbatimmeans the difference between glancing quicklyat a classroom from an outside perspective andseeing or understanding it from the emic or in-sider’s perspective. By interpreting at the sametime, he was trying to describe the classroom inhis fieldnotes (“I notice the papers have becomemore descriptive”), Barry missed an opportu-nity to observe how a teacher teaches descrip-tive writing. In this instance, the teacher givesher students a useful writing strategy, tellingher students that writers can name characters sothat readers will understand their personalities.She draws on Viola Swamp, an ugly and meansubstitute teacher from Miss Nelson Is Missing(Allard & Marshall, 1977), as an example.

For 4 days of observations, Barry only tooksix pages of notes and then wrote his interpreta-tion of writing workshop in his summary:


Figure 2: Hilda’s Fieldnotes 11/2/00



The loose atmosphere brought a high noise level. Iam not sure students were able to write effectivelywith the loud noise. Student collaboration changedinto visiting and drawing pictures instead of proof-reading and revising papers. I wonder if the writer’sworkshop time could be better focused in a moredirected manner.

Valerie, on the other hand, took 42 pages offieldnotes during her 4 days of observing thatwere all focused on the conversations duringwriting instruction. Her conclusions about thissame teacher’s writing workshop were quitedifferent, believing that

now I have a more accurate understanding of how toproceed with creating an atmosphere like Megan’sin my own classroom some day. I feel confidentenough that as soon as I get my own classroom I willstart a writer’s workshop as soon as I start teaching. Inoticed that just reading the information in a book isnot the same as witnessing an actual session.

Valerie was able to look at informants actingin various roles and relationships as she foundthat “everyone knew just what was expected ofthem, so they kept the noise level down.” In ad-dition, Valerie noticed how this teacher used thelanguage of writers: “I really like how Meganused technical terms when answering chil-dren.” Valerie implied that there was a role re-versal in writing workshop as she concludedher summary with, “What struck me the mostfrom observing this class was that the workshopran so smoothly and everyone was learningfrom it. It was almost as if it was being run by thestudents.” Not only did she observe what writ-ing workshop looked like in a classroom butalso was able to visualize herself as a writingworkshop teacher in the future. Herethnographic fieldnotes gave her the opportu-nity to see this classroom from the perspectiveof the teacher to understand what was being ac-complished and why.

Using Evidence for Interpretation

Using an ethnographic approach for observa-tion, preservice teachers collected evidence inthe form of fieldnotes and then used this evi-dence to summarize their interpretations. Oneof the most striking differences between these

summaries and ones we received in the pastfrom preservice teachers who had used codingsystems was that these observers were usingquotations from their notes as evidence for theirinterpretations of what happened during writ-ing instruction. They were writing and speak-ing from an informed position as participantobservers who had spent time with one teacher.For example, Connie’s summary explainedwhat she noticed about the teacher conferenceand used quotations from her fieldnotes:

She gave positive feedback that I think helped thestudents reflect on their own pieces. With Student#1, her remarks were both guiding and encouraging:“What is the main idea. Good sentence. . . . Good de-tail. . . . What did you think when that happened?How about a sentence or two where you explain it?”With Student #2, she asked a lot of questions thathelped the writer develop her piece: “How are yougoing to give me examples of what that is like? Howdoes your monster move? How are you going toscare me? Help me to imagine.” She makes thewriter aware of her audience. She gives suggestionsabout what to include.

In Connie’s summary, the description of theconference centered on how the teacher helpedstudents expand their writing by giving atten-tion to detail and to questions readers mightask. She drew on the evidence collected in thefieldnotes to give examples of how the teachertalked during a conference. Connie also noticedthat the conference context was a place wherewriters “reflect on their own pieces” and thatthe resource used to teach writing was the stu-dent’s own piece. What is interesting in thissummary is Connie’s point of view. Instead ofexplaining from her own position as apreservice teacher and student, she has takenup the concerns of the teacher and focused onhow the questions that the teacher used in thewriting conference were based on the needs ofthe student. Connie draws from the observationan awareness of how teachers engage in instruc-tional conversations depending on the needs oftheir students.

Ethnographic Interviews

Using an ethnographic approach allowedpreservice teachers opportunities to collaborate




with more experienced teachers duringethnographic interviews. Of the 42 preserviceteachers, 40 engaged in interviews. Observersbecame skilled note takers; however, until theyhad a chance to interview the teacher, thefieldnotes presented some questions for them.As one preservice teacher wrote in her sum-mary, “Interviewing and observation are bothimportant. One is not complete without theother.” In one instance, a preservice teacher ob-served a child covering her mouth during au-thor’s chair and questioned the teacher aboutthis.

There were several things that I needed (the teacher) toexplain to me [italics added]. One was, why did Juliecover her mouth when she spoke in the author’schair? Julie, a very shy child, had just started usingEnglish this past year. It was her first time in the au-thor’s chair. (The teacher) was thrilled that she hadcome so far. (Melody)

In another case, a preservice teacher recordedin his fieldnotes how the teacher pointed to thestudents instead of calling them by name:“When I point to you you’ll come back to mydesk and get this piece of paper. (She doesn’tcall on students—she’s pointing to them.)” Inhis summary, he explained how the interviewclarified this observation: “Much of the time(the teacher) will point instead of calling out astudent’s name. When I asked her about this [ital-ics added], she said, ‘It’s to make sure the stu-dents are paying attention to me with their eyesas well as their ears’” (Nate). In this waypreservice teachers used interviews to answerquestions about what the teachers were doingduring the observation as well as why theywere doing them.

Some preservice teachers e-mailed theirquestions to the in-service teacher. These e-mails gave preservice teachers opportunities todiscuss teaching and learning on an experien-tial level with practitioners. In addition, theyasked questions about strategies that happenedin a context that both had witnessed instead ofdiscussing abstract concepts at the university.When asked over e-mail if the class had been a“GATE” (Gifted and Talented) class, the teacherwas able to expand this observation and guidethe preservice teacher to a more child-centered

view of instruction as she explained how writ-ing workshop is beneficial for urban classroomswith a range of resources. She answered,

No, I do not have the GATE class. I have quite a rangeof abilities. You may notice that many of my studentsare English Language Learners. Writing workshop isgood for them because it is a low anxiety, process ap-proach to learning writing conventions and form.(Karen)

Observing How TalkShapes Instruction

From a sociolinguistic perspective, lookingexplicitly at the classroom talk helped preserviceteachers understand how in-service teachers di-rected instruction and how classroom discourseshapes instructional events. Summariespointed to how teachers used the vocabulary ofwriters such as proofread and revise as theytaught writing. In doing so, they were notinghow teachers and children took on identities ofauthors and writers by using this language. AsMelody wrote,

The third thing that impressed me the most was thatthe classroom was rich with writers’ vocabulary. Ev-eryday, as evidenced by my notes, Megan went overthe writing process. She uses the phrase, “That’swhat good readers and writers do, keep revising,”and “Use proofreading symbols to revise.” I heardher say, “I like your web.”

Preservice teachers who recorded the lan-guage also noticed that certain classroom cul-tures had particular ways of talking and acting.It is possible this “situated vocabulary”(Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995) is what helpspreservice teachers see from an insider perspec-tive. Willa discovered that observing in a class-room where children begin to direct the routinemeans that they develop a kind of culture (or asshe called it a “secret society”) with particularkinds of classroom language. Willa wrote,

Throughout my observation it quickly became ap-parent that the students were the ones running theclass. (The teacher) would ask the children about thenext thing they would be doing almost daily. Thechildren all knew the routine. It was almost like be-ing part of a cult or secret society. They had their ownlanguage [italics added]. During Writers’ Workshop,as they were signing up for what to work on that day,




the students would say “D1, D2, peer conference,teacher conference or publish.”

It was this attention to and focus on class-room language that allowed these observers tonotice how the talk was used to teach writing.Their fieldnotes that froze the dialogue on pa-per helped them understand the importance ofusing words such as “D1” (which meant, “I’mstill writing my first draft.”) or “peer confer-ence” (which meant that the author was meet-ing with a colleague and discussing how torevise a piece of writing). They drew from theirfieldnotes evidence that illustrated how lan-guage was the medium for instruction and howit was used to support students as they becamewriters (or mathematicians or historians orscientists).

Classroom Management

Focusing on the classroom language helpedpreservice teachers observe how teachers use“teacher talk” to organize and manage class-rooms. Some realized that the success of havingchildren make their own decisions in a work-shop environment depended on the organiza-tion, structure, and hard work of the teacher.Henry wrote,

The students were also responsible for themselvesand their writing. There was a lot of independencebut there was also structure and organization [italicsadded]. The students had various processes theyhad to go through, but they had the freedom to gothrough it at their own pace. I also saw how muchwork it was for the teacher. It’s hard to teach studentsto be independent and think independently becausethey are so used to being told what to do all throughschool.

Henry was not seeing this classroom as cha-otic but as complex with structure and organiza-tion that was put into place by the teacher. Thechallenging and daunting question for thesepreservice teachers of how to provide a demo-cratic classroom for children while at the sametime organizing a well-managed environmentwas answered as the observers took fieldnoteson the talk and actions of the members. They ap-preciated watching experienced informantswho could show them organizational strategies

and teach them tricks of the trade. For instance,transitioning from one event to another and get-ting the students’ attention were concerns of ob-servers. They noticed how “Counting Down,”“Simon Says,” and clapping patterns were usedto involve and organize the children. In one in-stance, music was used to direct events. Conniewrote,

I also noticed that music was a big element in herclass. She played classical music after high activityoutdoors to soothe the children, and she playedJames Brown’s “I Feel Good” in a freeze-frame for-mat to get the students in a fun mood to clean up.

Critical Issues of Equityand Social Justice

Although preservice teachers did not observeclassrooms long enough to research critical is-sues of equity and social justice in depth, therewere two instances where gender and racial dif-ferences during writing workshop were dis-cussed in our university classroom. The firstconcerned gender issues during the author’schair. Mindy wrote in her summary,

In particular, an incident that stood out to me wasthat on the first day, during Author’s Chair, a femalestudent read a poem expressing her dislike for skate-boarders which was a good poem, in my opinion,and generated a lot of audience response. The sec-ond day that I observed Author’s Chair, a male stu-dent wrote a rebuttal poem expressing his dislike forBarbie. I thought it was interesting to see the Chairbeing used as a forum. What I liked, too, was that Ka-ren allowed the students to express themselveswhile at the same time curtailing the class responseby saying, “We’re even now. [No other poems likethat are needed].”

Mindy’s summary begins to unravel thecomplexity of classrooms and explains why thisweeklong observation helped her see the con-tinuous timeline of patterns evolving. She ob-served how giving children choice in aworkshop environment leads to complex ques-tions of power, social positioning, and identity.She had the opportunity to see not only theseevents but also how the teacher reacted to them.From a perspective that explores how languageis used in different social contexts, the observ-ing and recording of conversations such as this




helped Mindy reflect on and discuss with otherscritical issues in the use of writing workshop

The second instance in which critical issueswere discussed involved one classroom withtwo recent immigrant children from China whodid not speak English and were classified asEnglish-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students.One preservice teacher who was observing, Pa-tricia, pointed out that this teacher had not in-volved all the students in the workshop.Although positive in her final description of theteacher, Patricia, who was herself a ChineseAmerican, wrote,

On November 2, there were two Chinese studentssitting at the round table. Due to their limited Eng-lish skills, they did not do the same activities or les-sons as the other students in the class. Susan gavethem a sheet of paper with 10 words and asked themto write the words and draw pictures correspondingto the words. For the whole 50 minutes, these twostudents drew pictures. I observed that they weredrawing Pokemon. For those 50 minutes, she did notcome to the round table. It was understandable thatshe had 30 students to attend to in only 50 minutes;however, I felt that these ESL students were some-what abandoned and isolated from the class.

Patricia’s critical observation of this teacherresulted in her ultimate decision in her sum-mary that writing workshop was not a success-ful strategy because she thought the teacherwas not able to effectively involve students whodid not speak English. Patricia made her evalu-ation from an informed perspective. She col-lected 23 pages of ethnographic fieldnotesacross 4 days. Her notes were detailed and de-scriptive in that they illustrated the talk and theactions of the members of the classroom. Shewaited to make interpretations until she had achance to interview the teacher and then criti-cally examined her notes from her position as afuture teacher who was interested in ESL stu-dents. She collected data about how sometimes,in some classes, ESL students are not includedin whole-class instruction.

DISCUSSIONFieldwork involves the disciplined study of whatthe world is like to people who have learned to see,hear, speak, think, and act in ways that are different.

Rather than studying people, ethnography meanslearning from people. (Spradley, 1980, p. 3)

The current study found that when preserviceteachers used fieldnotes and interviews as toolsto observe classrooms from ethnographic andsociolinguistic perspectives, they were able todescribe what was happening from insider per-spectives. Preservice teachers who were skillednote takers were able to first record the talk andactions of the classroom, and then interview theteacher before making interpretations and sum-marizing what was happening. By looking andlistening closely, these participant observers be-came fluent in the everyday life of the class-room. They were able to hold off on makingcertain kinds of judgments until after they hadspent some time in the classroom. By then theywere able to see the classroom from multipleperspectives and weave these together into aninterpretive summary that used the fieldnotesas evidence for their conclusions. Instead ofonly observing from a preservice teacher pointof view, they could now reflect on perspectivesfrom the classroom teacher, the children in writ-ing workshop, and data collected from theirown fieldwork investigations. They became in-formed observers whose fieldnotes contained“more pedagogically relevant information thanthe notes of novice note-takers” (F. Erickson,personal communication, December, 1, 2001).

Because talk is so important in creating andconstituting events in classrooms, preserviceteachers were asked to recognize that talk is amedium to look at because “talk is instrumentalin shaping events” (Edwards & Westgate, 1987,p. 134). When they recorded the classroom dis-course, they began to have an appreciation forhow talk affects instruction. Observers saw talkas central to the social practices involved inwriting instruction and noticed how the talkstructured and shaped writing events. By look-ing for interactions between teachers and stu-dents, they began to understand the “silent lan-guage” that is present in classrooms anddevelops over time, sometimes becoming sucha regular and routine language for insiders thatit cannot be explained explicitly or observedovertly. As Willa noticed in her summary, thestudents she observed “all knew the routines. It




was almost like being part of a cult or secret soci-ety.” Looking explicitly at the talk gavepreservice teachers opportunities to see howteachers directed instructional conversationsand used the language of authors with childrento teach writing. Preservice teachers alsolearned the language of management andrecorded how teachers used words to organizeworkshop environments (“By the time I spellchimpanzee let’s have our notebooks out,”“You’ve been prewriting for 5 days so I’m goingto put you down for drafting”).

Ethnographic interviews were vehicles forinforming beginning teachers about why in-service teachers did what they did. By lookingover the fieldnotes and hearing interpretationsof what was happening from another perspec-tive, experienced and novice teachers togetherreflected on what happened, how it happened,and whether it was successful. Interviews cor-roborated the observations for preservice teach-ers and also validated for the experienced teach-ers that what they were doing was significantand valued. Instead of looking from textbookpractices and personal experience alone, theseobservers drew from their own research data toask experts about practices they had seen work-ing successfully in classrooms. As one of theobservers wrote in her summary, “In the 4 daysthat I observed her, I learned so much. I am cur-rently using some of the techniques she used inher classroom with my own students. I plan togo and visit her once a month” (Christy).

Ethnographic and sociolinguistic methodshelped observers ask critical questions toexplore instructional approaches. Some stu-dents were able to go beyond the university dis-cussions about writing workshop and ask ques-tions such as “What do I think about genderdiscussions in the workshop? What responsibil-ities do I have as a teacher in relation to theseissues? and How am I going to include EnglishLanguage Learners in my own writingworkshop?”

Ethnographic methods hold special potentialfor giving preservice teachers a fine-grainedunderstanding of complex instructional con-texts and to see how best practices are enacted inclassroom settings. More specifically, these

methods allow the observers to see that for allits complexity, writing workshop is also doableand is a potentially valuable approach in thehands of knowledgeable teachers. Theseethnographic techniques have the potential toprovide new teachers with ways of exploringtheir own teaching contexts as teacher research-ers. By reflecting on their own practices andrecording their own classroom conversations,teachers can use ethnographic and sociolinguis-tic perspectives to discover why lessons did notproduce the results they had hoped for, whysome students are learning and others not, howthe social text in classrooms can be used to teachthe academic text, and how to give access to allchildren. The summaries illustrated howpreservice teachers were, through their analysisof experienced teachers’ practices, envisioningwho they might be as future writing workshopteachers.

NOTE1. This program of research has been supported by an Innova-

tive Instructional Grant from California State University, Los An-geles. We wish to thank our students at Cal. State LA for allowingus to use their work and our colleagues (Lesley Rex, FredErickson, Gary Anderson, Margaret Moustafa, Robert Land, andPeter Smagorinsky) for reviewing this article and giving us valu-able feedback. We also wish to thank all the in-service teacherswho allowed our preservice teachers to observe writing work-shop in their classrooms and Frances Kuwahara Chinn, JeanAdenika-Morrow, and Albert Jones for allowing our students topractice ethnography in their university classrooms.

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Carolyn R. Frank is associate professor at CaliforniaState University, Los Angeles, and director of the CentralLos Angeles Writing Project. Her specializations includeethnography and writing instruction with preserviceteachers.

Frederick L. Uy is assistant professor at CaliforniaState University, Los Angeles. His specializations includemathematics instruction and ethnomathematics.




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