Course:LIBR559A/ Barab, S. A., Thomas, M. K., Dodge, T., Squire, K., & Newell, M. (2004).

From UBC Wiki

Barab, S. A., Thomas, M. K., Dodge, T., Squire, K., & Newell, M. (2004). Critical Design Ethnography: Designing for Change. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 35(2), 254-268.

Purpose:

“This article describes critical design ethnography, an ethnographic process involving participatory design work aimed at transforming a local context while producing an instructional design that can be used in multiple contexts. Here, we reflect on the opportunities and challenges that emerged as we built local critiques then reified them into a designed artifact that has been implemented in classrooms all over the world” (p 254).

Main argument:

Critical design ethnography seeks to bridge observational and applied research while also positioning the researcher within the context of the research as opposed to outside of it. The researcher “assumes a critical stance, in which the researcher becomes a change agent who is collaboratively developing structures intended to critique and support the transformation of the communities being studied” (p 255).

Method:

Researchers used a critical narrative style to explain concepts surrounding critical design ethnography drawing out understandings of participatory action, ethnography, and instructional design. During the specific research written about in the article, researchers used methods of activity analysis, talking diaries, personal documentaries, and researcher biographies (p 260) while also being cognizant of and interrogating their own stances and motivations for their work.

Topics:

system design, change agent, critical design ethnography, critical ethnography, ethnography, instructional design, methodology, participatory action research (PAR), shared community

Novel ideas/weakness:

Both critical ethnography and PAR allow researchers to exist within their research as opposed to outside of it as impartial, expert observers. The combination of the two approaches into critical ethnographic design functions as a way to approach and interact as both a researcher with a particulalr set of skills and as one interested in social justice while being cognizant of the ways of knowing and doing that are already imbeded in the community being studied/researched/participated in.

This article is valuable in part for the extended discussion of positioning of values and ideas the authors include. The authors seek to make clear that becoming imbeded in a community of interest is preferrable while also articulating the many nuances of what it means to be a researcher in a community. Barab et al. work at a full articulation of the power dynamics while they also concede that it is not possible to manage or understand all. The compromise is to make the implicit explicit (p 264) and to fully interrogate one’s own values especially when approaching a situation as a change agent.

Page author: Erin Brown