Dear fellow researchers, I have just started my new ethnographic research project in a classroom in the German-speaking part of Switzerland in Year 1. One current focus is on the issue how teachers and children deal with language heterogeneity in German lessons (most children are multilingual with different levels of competence in German and there is the diglossia Standard German-Swiss German, teachers and children speaking Swiss German to different extents). I would be very grateful for advice on international studies (and also ongoing research) on similar subjects.
Many thanks in advance! Evamaria Zettl
Excelente investigación, donde se puede hacer un test al inicio del año. Para ver el nivel de dominio de las lenguas heterogéneas, después desarrollar el estudio o estrategia planeada, y al final realizar otro test, para ver si hubo avances en el dominio del swiss- Germán. Como el estudio arrojará datos cuantitativos, al interpretarse, convierten al estudio con un enfoque también cualitativo. Por lo que resulta una investigación mixta.
Dear Lucina, many thanks for your kind answer. In case you know any studies in this field, please let me know. Best regards and best of success for your work Evamaria
As an ethnographic study, what is your aim? While mixed methods is possible, honor the roots of ethnography by participant observation, interviews, and reviewing artifacts. You can even produce artifacts, such as narrative inquiry and having students draw and discuss important topics. Students could take pictures. My point is there are many ways to move beyond traditional observation. Prolonged engagement and observations are key. Are you collecting field notes?
Many thanks for your ideas, this is really a good piece of advice on expanding the different types of artifacts collected after a period of participant observation (at the moment, I only collect classical field notes). My aim is to have a deeper insight into how heterogeneity regarding language(s) is dealt with in a year 1 classroom. Indeed, collecting different artefacts such as children`s texts would produce deeper insights.
Evamaria Zettl one more great idea, often overlooked: diagrammatical thinking. Consider time, space, and objects. How are objects used as tools between and amongst children? What are the representations, and how do they change? What/how is space used and conceptualized? When analyzing the data, look at the props in the different scenes and the language usage around them. This analysis can be very interesting.
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