Hi

Anyone has any experience with observations or ethnography?

if yes maybe you can tell me how much time is enough to do some observations for my reserch.

Methodology books always say observations require time. but i am not sure how much time is enough.

I am thinking about observing a teaching setting; students interactions, teaching method and stuff

well attending 10 sessions well be enough?

Hi Sue

Time required will depend very much on what you want to find out. If you are not a teacher in the education sector you wish to observe, you should probably allow longer. As to number of sessions, it depends what you are looking at - a particular topic area, subject, lesson, series of lessons - or whether your focus is more on the discourse space of the classroom (i.e. behaviours, relations, rather than content). Two good books (quite short) to read are:

Using observations in Small-Scale Research: A Beginner's Guide by Mary Simpson and Jennifer Tuson.

Participant Observation by James P Spradley.

You also need to realise/remember that observation is slightly more than 'just looking' although it can be that as well. Obviously, if you have questions in mind, observation is more than looking, but if you're looking to identify questions, then that's different. One phrase I always find helpful when observing is that the observer looks to "make the familiar strange". On the other hand, you may wish to make a systematic observation, i.e. be looking for examples of particular instances of things. In this case, you would use an observation schedule.

Obs.shedules can be simple/complex ranging from a tally sheet divided by time/roles/behaviours/activities observed, etc. If you truly intend an ethnographic study - then you would come to the observations with as open a mind as possible and try to 'discover' what is going on in the setting, then categorise and thematise your results. So, in terms of time... it could be the equivalent of 'how long is a piece of string' - as long as it needs to be to do the job well.

Hi bakuvia

thanks for the infos, really helpful

I guess i have some sort of ideas in my mind to look for duirng the observations and i guess i will make use of a scheduel.

but i hope it doesnt take a long time to observe and it doesnt turn to be a disaster and i eventually end up with little or nothing significant!

I'll check the book which you'v recommended .