Ethnography of primary school teaching in Tanzania
pp. 209-232
in: Paul Smeyers, David Bridges, Nicholas C. Burbules, Morwenna Griffiths (eds), International handbook of interpretation in educational research, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstrakt
This chapter focuses on ethnographic case study and how this research strategy allows for in-depth investigations through a range of qualitative methods committed to producing complex, holistic, and detailed understandings of a situation. This research strategy was particularly useful with regard to a research project that attempted to characterise and understand how Tanzanian teachers experienced the world, the working and living conditions which they negotiated daily, and how these contributed to their practices and behaviours in the classroom. Teachers' personal narratives were collected via three school-based ethnographic case studies located in northern Tanzania. Attention was paid to the role of interpretation in facilitating translation from Kiswahili to English, speaking with and for others, and the delineation of two types of narratives: an aspirational story of the types of personal and occupational lives that teachers wish to lead; and wider meta-narratives regarding social and institutional structures that conflict with these aspirations.