The Methodological Implications of Working Ethnographically

Abstract

In Chapter 2 I outlined the possible factors that make school subject departments different as places to learn and highlighted the importance of the department setting for student teachers in their school practice. In Chapter 3 I explained how this research views learning as a social and cultural process, and why CHAT is an appropriate theory for the research. This chapter describes the design for the study accepting that in social science research the theoretical perspective should inform the research design. The chapter illustrates how seeing subject departments as case studies and also as social situations for the development of student teacher learning enables research of school subject departments, in relation to their student teacher education activity systems, over an extended period of time.