ABSTRACT
In the last twenty years a number of ethnographers working in the field of education, myself included, have been experimenting with a form of writing and disseminating research known as ‘performed ethnography’ (Brunner, 1999; Gallagher, 2006; Goldstein, 2003, 2006, 2007; Mienczakowski, 1997; Sykes and Goldstein, 2004). Briefly, performed ethnography, also known as ‘performance ethnography’ (Denzin, 2003) and ‘ethnodrama’ (Saldaña, 2005), involves turning educational ethnographic data and texts into scripts and dramas that are either read aloud by a group of participants or performed before audiences. The richness of performed ethnography comes from three sources: the ethnographic research from which a play script is created; the reading or performance of the play; and the conversations that take place after the reading or performance. In these follow-up conversations, research participants and other readers or audience members have input about the conclusions of the research. This allows for ongoing analysis of the research findings. The incorporation of audience input can help create more ethical relationships between researchers, their research participants, and the communities to which the research participants belong by providing an opportunity for mutual analysis. Post-reading/performance conversations also allow ethnographers in education to link their research to their teaching and larger public forums on pressing social issues. For example, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT), where I work as an educational researcher and teacher educator, the reading and performing of critical ethnographic scripts have engaged our teacher education students, and the general public, in critical analysis and discussions of critical teaching practices in the areas of multilingual, anti-racist, and anti-homophobia education (Goldstein, 2000, 2004c, 2004b; Sykes and Goldstein, 2004). It is the potential pedagogical power of performed ethnography to provoke critical analysis and institutional change that is at the center of my experimentation with ethnographic playwriting and at the heart of the methodological dilemmas I present here.
