ABSTRACT

Research is a scientific process that assumes that events in the world are lawful and orderly and, furthermore, that the lawfulness is discoverable. This chapter assesses the knowledge that students already have about ethnography and research through a KWL. Interviews are another way that social scientists collect data. In interviews, researchers obtain responses to questions orally. Interviews differ from surveys because the researcher may modify the data collection to fit the respondent's replies. The purpose of observing a cultural group from an ethnographic perspective is to discover the different themes and patterns that underlie the structure and function of a cultural group. In observing one third-grade classroom, Walker identified behavioral patterns that were repeated day after day in the classroom in lieu of a list of posted behavioral expectations or rules. These became the routines of the classroom.