Comparative, Diachronic, Ethnographic Research on Education

Autor/in	Tobin, Joseph
Titel	Comparative, Diachronic, Ethnographic Research on Education
Quelle	In: Current Issues in Comparative Education, 16 (2014) 2, S.6-13 (8 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1523-1615
Schlagwörter	Qualitative Research; Ethnography; Video Technology; International Education; Cross Cultural Studies; Comparative Education; Research Methodology; Interviews; Early Childhood Education; Role; Cultural Influences; Global Approach; Political Influences; Economic Factors; Educational Change; Child Care Centers; Creativity; Foreign Countries; Educational History; China; Japan; United States + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Qualitative Forschung; Ethnografie; Internationale Erziehung; Cultural comparison; Kulturvergleich; Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft; Research method; Forschungsmethode; Interviewing; Interviewtechnik; Early childhood; Education; Frühkindliche Bildung; Frühpädagogik; Rollen; Cultural influence; Kultureinfluss; Globales Denken; Political influence; Politischer Einfluss; Ökonomischer Faktor; Bildungsreform; Child care facilities; Child care services; Kinderzentrum; Kinderbetreuung; Kreativität; Ausland; History of education; Bildungsgeschichte; USA
Abstract	Most qualitative studies in international education take place in a single site in a single nation. When studies are of more than one country, they most often use more quantitative than qualitative approaches. Beatrice and John Whiting conducted the most systematic of comparative cross-cultural studies of child rearing in their "Six Cultures" (1975) study. One of the six ethnographies that served as the foundation of that study was conducted by Robert A. LeVine (1966). Author Joseph Tobin has attempted to carry this comparative project forward, and to do so in a way that systematically deals with variation within, as well as among cultures, while also taking into account how cultures stay the same and change over time. For the past thirty years in his studies of preschools in Japan, China, the US and other countries, the approach he has employed is a method he calls "video cued multivocal ethnography," but which is better known as the "Preschool in Three Cultures method." The core idea of this method is that videos function in these studies not as data but as interviewing cues. In this article, Tobin compares the results of two studies where this approach was used: (1) The "Preschool in Three Cultures" study (Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989) which emphasized differences in Chinese, Japanese, and US approaches to early childhood education, and argued for the importance of thinking about the role of what we call "implicit cultural beliefs and practices"; and (2) A second study, conducted twenty years later, where the investigators explored the power of globalization and other social, economic, and political forces on preschools by adding a diachronic dimension. The findings of the two studies showed that between the mid-1980s and the first decade of the millennia, early childhood education in China changed a lot and Japanese preschools stayed much the same. Understanding why a day at Komatsudani Day Care Center in Kyoto looks much the same in 2005 as it did twenty years earlier is as compelling a question as understanding why Daguan Preschool in Kunming China changed. Maintaining continuity in a program of early childhood education from one era to the next requires as much effort and creativity as it does to change. Herein, Tobin provides examples of the kind of change of preschool beliefs and practices they found in China and the kind of continuity they found in Japan, and why. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Teachers College, Columbia University. International and Transcultural Studies, P.O. Box 211, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027. e-mail: info@cicejournal.org; Web site: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10