Introduction

In the field of social science research more researchers now tend to turn to the qualitative rather than the quantitative research since they believe there are multiple truths out there in the world rather than a single truth that the positivists (quantitative researchers) believe to be. One of the kinds of qualitative research is the ethnography, or ethnographic study. With the rising of the field of anthropology, in particular cultural anthropology, ethnographic study has become more popular and widely used (see the works of Mead, Malinowski, and Spindler, to name but a few). But what is ethnography?

What is ethnography?

            Etymologically the word ethnography comes from the Greek word “ethnos” which means people, and “graphein”, writing. As such, it refers to the genre of writing that presents varying degrees of qualitative and quantitative descriptions of human social phenomena, based on fieldwork. (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography). Another author, Hammersley, states that ethnography is “a form of research focusing on the sociology of meaning through close field observation of sociocultural phenomena” (http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765) Goodley (2003) describes ethnography as an approach to research that involves immersion within, and investigation of, a culture or social world.

            As we have seen, then, ethnography covers two meanings as Kell (1999) puts it: it is the fundamental research method of cultural anthropology, and at the same time it is the written text produced to report ethnographic research results. How, then, shall we define ethnography in the field of educational research as the one I am doing now?

            James Spradley (1979, 1980) is the key figure in ethnography and he is famous for two of his most influential works: Ethnographic Interview (1979) and Participant Observation (1980) in which he explains the field methods of ethnographic research. Both methods are appropriate for the research I am going to conduct, that is the profile of an exemplary EFL teacher in Indonesian secondary schools. In collecting data from the field I will employ both methods and I will follow the steps pointed out by Spradley.

What do I do in my ethnographic study?

            Doing ethnographic study involves “living” with the native people of the culture we are trying to study, getting involved with their activities, habits, and with the ways they go about their usual business in their day to day lives. The fundamental aims in doing ethnographic research are to understand people and to get at the meaning of things as the natives perceive them. In other words we are trying to learn from the people in a certain culture. This goes very well with the original subject of cultural anthropology that is the native people of a certain tribe or ethnic group. In my case, however, the native people refer to the teachers of English in Indonesian secondary schools (SMP). In the same line, “culture” here refers to the system of knowledge that the teachers have to enable them to interpret the world around them and to develop strategies to face that world (their job, day to day activities, the requirements for developing their profession, etc.) Lastly, the ‘meaning’ I am trying to find out is how my informants and subjects perceive what “exemplary teachers” mean.

            In trying to find the profile of an exemplary EFL teacher in SMP I have four questions that need answers:

For each of the four questions I will do the steps elaborated by Spradley. Originally, he elaborates the procedure of ethnographic study into twelve steps as follows:

From the twelve steps above I will focus my discussion in this paper on the primary step that is the domain analysis. I believe that domain analysis is one of the primary steps which can become the stepping stone for the other analyses (the others being the taxonomic analysis, which aims at finding out how cultural domains are organized; componential analysis, which systematically searches for attributes associated with cultural categories; and cultural theme analysis, which aims at finding out cultural themes existing within the domains). It is the fourth step in the ethnographic research cycle after we have asked questions, collected data, and made an ethnographic record.

Domain analysis is the first type of ethnographic analysis in the cycle. In ethnographic research, data analysis should be ongoing and help fieldwork gain momentum toward useful information (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/anthro) In other words, from analyzing the data the ethnographer can formulate more questions, collect more data, and make more fieldnotes and further analysis until the research project nears completion. In my study, the domain analysis will be used to answer the first two questions: “what competencies does an exemplary teacher possess”? and “how did he/she obtain those competencies”?

Before going further I would like to explain what domain is. As described in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Spradley) a domain is a “symbolic category that includes other categories”. It can also be said that a domain is a “collection of categories that share a certain kind of relationship”. As a collection of categories a domain has three key elements, those are: (1) a cover term (let’s say, teaching-learning activities in EFL lessons); (2) included terms (let’s say, outdoor activities, role-plays); and (3) a single, unifying semantic relationship (let’s say, still in our example, “outdoor activities and role-plays are kinds of teaching-learning activities in EFL lessons”).

Ringo (1993) states that ethnography inevitably happens in a social situation; and every social situation has nine major dimensions: those of space, actors, activities, objects, acts, events, time, goals, and feelings. Within these dimensions some relationships would form; and the relationships are what she calls “domains”. In other words she states that domains refer to a category of cultural meanings that includes other similar categories. Thus, the goal of doing domain analysis is to discover patterns of culture in a certain social situation. To illustrate, let us take an example from the social situation I am studying, that of EFL teaching and learning. Previously I have mentioned the domain of teaching-learning activities; another example may be the domain of “colleague”. As a cover term, colleague might have the following included terms: teachers of other subjects in the same school, teachers of English in other schools, and teachers of other subjects in other schools. The semantic relationship might be “kinds of”.

Having defined what domain is I shall turn to the steps of domain analysis. Still according to the sources in wikipedia, a domain analysis is “a search for the larger units of cultural knowledge”. In my case the units of the cultural knowledge refer to the profile of exemplary teachers of English in Indonesian Secondary Schools (SMPs).

The first step in doing domain analysis is picking up one semantic relationship. In my study I firstly choose the relationship of kinds of activities in teaching-learning English in SMP. It should be noted, however, that in one study there are many domain analyses covering various semantic relationships which will be followed up with subsequent steps. In Spradley’s terms the relationships cover manner/ way, place, reason, effect, kind, use, stage, attribute and part (Spradley, 1980:93).

The next step in my study is selecting a portion of data, reading it, and filling out a domain analysis worksheet. The worksheet is planned and prepared before the first step. While filling out the worksheet I will list all the terms that fit the semantic relationship I have decided. Below is a model of the worksheet.

Third, I formulate questions for each domain. To do this I select a sample from an informant’s statement using my fieldnotes and/or transcripts from interviews. The next step is finding a cover term and included terms which are appropriate for the semantic relationship I have selected. Below is an example of how my worksheet will look like in one of the semantic relationships.

The last two steps in doing the domain analysis are repeating the search for domains using a different semantic relationship and making a list of all the domains so far formulated. Sometimes the list can be very long, so it is better to be prepared with quite a large card/worksheet, or we may write at the back of it.

Still another source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Spradley) mentions that before making the list of domains we should formulate structural questions for the semantic relationship we have selected. Structural questions are the questions that enable the ethnographer to find out information about the domains of basic elements in the informant’s cultural knowledge. These questions should be related to other questions and repeated over and over in order that the informants can answer them clearly. In the principle of concurrency, structural questions should be asked together with descriptive questions. This definition may seem to be too far fetched for the study I am undertaking. The example below may make it easier to picture how it is done.

ETHNOGRAPHER:          You said an exemplary teacher should be able to vary his/her techniques in teaching to make the lessons more interesting. Can you mention what those techniques are? (structural question)

INFORMANT:                  Well, the teacher should not lecture all the time. She should vary the activities in class, for example by asking the students to work in groups or pairs, to observe nature, to make a poem, et cetera. (included terms)

ETHNOGRAPHER:          Can you describe one group activity which you say will make the lesson more interesting? (descriptive question).

INFORMANT:                  Yes, for example the teacher can use a story for a group discussion for the group members to agree on the characters in the story, the problem(s), and the solution to the problem. That way the students can discover the structure of a story without the teacher telling them.

It should be clear at this point that the informant is an adult, a colleague or a parent; someone who knows something about teaching and learning activities. In the above example we can see that the structural question is asked in conjunction with other questions.

In asking the structural questions the ethnographer should also employ other principles: the principles of explanation/elaboration, repetition, context and cultural framework. All these are for the purpose of finding out how the informant organizes the cultural knowledge.

Conclusion

       As a conclusion, we should keep in mind that domain analysis is the first step in analyzing ethnographic data in our study. There are several steps in doing domain analysis, each of which should be done as an ongoing activity, and not after all data have been collected. The ethnographer should also bear in mind that there will probably be more than one domain analyses in the course of the analysis, and it will be determined by the results of the previous analyses. That is precisely the purpose of doing the domain analysis: to discover more semantic relationships, formulate more questions, collect more data, and doing more analyses. It is also the basis for subsequent steps in the ethnography, such as the taxonomic analysis and componential analysis. These analyses should be continued until we reach data saturation and our study is completed.

By: Miryam Anugerahwati

References

Hammersley, Martyn. 2003. in (http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765) accessed on November 15, 2007.

Kell, Suzanne. 1999. Gaining and Maintaining Access in Educational Setting: the highs and the lows of ethnographic fieldwork. In The Weaver: A Forum for New Ideas in Education (http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/graded/sked3.html) accessed on November 15, 2007.

Ringo, Sally 1993. Researchers can learn from ethnography (http://www.quirks.com) accessed on November 19, 2007.

Spradley, James P. 1979. The Ethnographic Interview. Belmont: Wadsworth.

______________. 1980. Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Spradley) accessed on December 1, 2007

_________ (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography) accessed on December 1, 2007