ERIC Number: ED202616
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1981-Apr-13
Pages: 24
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Evaluating American Indian Programs: An Ethnographic Approach.
Churchman, David; Guyette, Susan
Traditional methods of ethnographic data collection and analysis can be adapted to conducting summative evaluations of educational programs, particularly those for American Indians. Such evaluations can be approached from a micro-ethnographic standpoint (in which the school alone is studied as a subculture) or a macro-ethnographic standpoint (in which the school is studied as part of the culture as a whole). While each approach has advantages, the macro-ethnographic approach is better suited to non-Western cultures and American Indian cultures in particular, because it can be used to discover discrepancies between the educational goals of the community and the actualities of the schools. Ethnographic evaluation methods are essentially the same for each approach. In an iterative rather than sequential process, data are collected via interviews (using descriptive, structural, and contrastive questions) and participant observation (to determine the places, actors, and activities of the program), and analyzed to determine its domains and taxonomy. Ethnographic summative evaluation is advantageous because it eliminates the evaluator's cultural values; it needs no control group or culturally biased achievement testing; it needs no statistical analysis; its reports are more useful; and it facilitates the study of the cultural appropriateness of the program. (SB)
Publication Type: Reports - Evaluative; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Los Angeles, CA, April 13-17, 1981).