KALTHOFF, H. (2013). Practices of Grading: an ethnographic study of educational assessment. Ethnography and Education. 8(1): 89-104. [Review Article]
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GEERTZ, C. (1977). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York. Basic Books. Especially cc. 1 and 6.
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Ethnography entails the attempt to access the meanings constituted in particular cultures that may comprise whole societies or, more commonly, smaller cultural groups. The approach derives from anthropology and is now widely used (and misused) in social and in educational research. There are many different takes on ethnography, Clifford Geertz (1977), for example, describes the ethnographic interpretation as in many respects similar to literary studies; the practitioners of both seek to produce interpretations of meaning without insisting that they have the final word on it. There are no set data collection strategies associated with ethnography, but Geertz, again, advocates the collection of very rich data, covering situations from all sides, as it were to produce what he calls ‘thick description’, an expression that he borrows from Gilbert Ryle (1968), a layered description that generates meaning upon meaning upon meaning. A reading of Ryle’s original lecture gives a good sense of the problem.
Two boys fairly swiftly contract the eyelids of their right eyes. In the first boy this is only an involuntary twitch; but the other is winking conspiratorially to an accomplice. At the lowest or the thinnest level of description the two contractions of the eyelids may be exactly alike. From a cinematograph-film of the two faces there might be no telling which contraction, if either, was a wink, or which, if either, were a mere twitch. Yet there remains the immense but unphotographable difference between a twitch and a wink. For to wink is to try to signal to someone in particular, without the cognisance of others, a definite message according to an already understood code. It has very complex success-versus-failure conditions. The wink is a failure if its intended recipient does not see it; or sees it but does not know or forgets the code; or misconstrues it; or disobeys or disbelieves it; or if any one else spots it. A mere twitch, on the other hand, is neither a failure nor a success; it has no intended recipient; it is not meant to be unwitnessed by anybody; it carries no message. It may be a symptom but it is not a signal. The winker could not not know that he was winking; but the victim of the twitch might be quite unaware of his twitch. The winker can tell what he was trying to do; the twitcher will deny that he was trying to do anything. (Ryle, 1968; no page numbers)
… and so on.
Because of this requirement for ‘thick description’, researchers adopting an ethnographic approach will often use both formal and informal interviews, participant and non-participant observation and documentary evidence, but they may also use other data collection strategies as well, even employing quantitative methods where this is deemed to be appropriate; the aim is to generate sufficient and sufficiently rich data to enable what can be defended as a valid and reliable interpretation—but not the only possible interpretation—of the meanings that are produced within the culture.
Kalthoff’s article presents an interesting way to study teachers’ assessment practices and is concerned with the ways in which assessment outcomes are actually achieved. The study represents a departure from the technical study of assessment and also from sociological studies that consider assessment outcomes in terms of the reproduction of social inequalities. The work was carried out in the early 1990s in German high schools, but has only just been published in this English language journal. Kalthoff spent nine months in the schools getting right up close to the teachers’ assessment practices, both in private marking mode and in the negotiation of grades in oral examinations. Only part of the whole study is presented in this article. In reading the paper you should concentrate on the following issues—especially the one in red—for discussion in the seminar:
case study
coding
ethnography
fieldwork
informal interview
participant observation
semi-structured interview
thick description
transcript
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