Critical Evaluation of Articles by Russel (2005) and Brown Et Al. (2005)] Critical Evaluation of Articles by Russel (2005) and Brown Et Al. (2005)]
Nottingham University Business School
MSc Programmes
[Research Methods for Finance and Investment]
[Critical Evaluation of Articles by
Russel (2005) and Brown et al. (2005)]
[Konstantin Dambaev]
Student ID: [4158276]
Word count: 3007 (without headings), 3234 (with headings).
COPY [1]
It’s a question of trust: Balancing the relationship between students and teachers in ethnographic fieldwork
Russell, L.
1. The researcher says that “[i]ntense observations in the classroom and playground area were completed … [and] detailed observations were conducted in … lessons” (p.184). What can you infer about the things she observed and the methods she used to record her observations?
The author has attempted to investigate very complicated and specific topic of students` resistance behavior at school. It is obvious that this subject forces researcher to observe students in their common life, to find the way to acquire relevant information about facts of resistance to schooling. One cannot deny that this fact directly influenced the choice of methodology, which was applied by Russell. In this case, ethnography matches all the criteria for the research, because this method is meant to let researcher obtain more deep information from the researched and achieve “thick description” (Geertz, 1973; Cassel and Symon, 2004). However, this fact was doubted in the paper of Bate (1997), where he described modern ethnography methodology as “quick description” and argues that it lacks of time observation.
Moreover, Russell argues that her research demanded close relationships with observed students and initially she had to achieve trust with them in order to gather any information. That is why the researcher is applying common technique in fieldwork – establishing ground rules with students. Eventually, it has helped her to take more realistic picture of students’ usual behavior, when it became clear that the author is not going to
MSc Programmes
[Research Methods for Finance and Investment]
[Critical Evaluation of Articles by
Russel (2005) and Brown et al. (2005)]
[Konstantin Dambaev]
Student ID: [4158276]
Word count: 3007 (without headings), 3234 (with headings).
COPY [1]
It’s a question of trust: Balancing the relationship between students and teachers in ethnographic fieldwork
Russell, L.
1. The researcher says that “[i]ntense observations in the classroom and playground area were completed … [and] detailed observations were conducted in … lessons” (p.184). What can you infer about the things she observed and the methods she used to record her observations?
The author has attempted to investigate very complicated and specific topic of students` resistance behavior at school. It is obvious that this subject forces researcher to observe students in their common life, to find the way to acquire relevant information about facts of resistance to schooling. One cannot deny that this fact directly influenced the choice of methodology, which was applied by Russell. In this case, ethnography matches all the criteria for the research, because this method is meant to let researcher obtain more deep information from the researched and achieve “thick description” (Geertz, 1973; Cassel and Symon, 2004). However, this fact was doubted in the paper of Bate (1997), where he described modern ethnography methodology as “quick description” and argues that it lacks of time observation.
Moreover, Russell argues that her research demanded close relationships with observed students and initially she had to achieve trust with them in order to gather any information. That is why the researcher is applying common technique in fieldwork – establishing ground rules with students. Eventually, it has helped her to take more realistic picture of students’ usual behavior, when it became clear that the author is not going to