The Alien Worlds project teaches ethnographic skills using the societies of dystopian, postapocalyptic, and science fiction texts as imagined field sites and targets for analysis. These exercises and assignments, which illustrate principles of qualitative fieldwork, were developed when COVID-19 precautions made it impossible to assign tasks that…

Describes a course in ethnographic field methods/qualitative research methods. Discusses concepts and learning opportunities provided by the various texts utilized and by the experiences of several pioneers in field research. (GC)

Describes a course designed principally for teachers enrolled in a graduate program in cross-cultural education. States that, although most of the individuals taking the course will not conduct field research, the skills acquired will better enable them to teach in a cross-cultural setting. (GC)

In contrast to Bogdan's approach (outlined in a preceding article), which considers fieldwork to be a research method, this author views ethnographic fieldwork as a paradigm. His graduate course in fieldwork concentrates on interpretation and stresses the quality, quantity, and intimacy of human relationships between observers and their subjects.…

Outlines an approach to teaching fieldwork that the author has used in graduate seminars. The course, which requires students to engage in data collection, is organized to follow the stages of an actual research project. (GC)

Stresses the importance of theory in fieldwork, and describes a fieldwork course for graduate students in education at Stanford University. (GC)

Court ethnography assignments provide a wonderful way to teach observation skills in an unfamiliar legal setting. Most people obtain their knowledge of legal proceedings from television or movies and students are no exception. But teachers can teach students to closely examine court process and legal behavior in a sophisticated way by assigning…

In a course entitled "Field Methods for the Study of Education," three themes dominate: professionalism, Darwinian methodology, and application. Unifying these are the notions that the proper use of theory is critical to good ethnography and the natural history/Darwinian paradigm is the central core of the anthropological, ethnological…

In reference to a preceding article by Bogdan, outlines an "alternative model" for the teaching of educational fieldwork to graduate students. The course described is an introduction to fieldwork based on the concept of the classroom as the most fundamental unit in contemporary educational systems. (GC)