chapter 4 questions

     With ethnographic and case study, one can understand a phenomenon in deep length. However, the reliability and validity of these types might pose problems. Polio and Friedman (2017) point out several potential problems concerning ethics, observers’ bias, and evaluative criteria of these types of research.

    With ethnographic and case study, protection of the identity of the participants can sometimes be undermined; also, how to report the study result of a participant when it is not desirable is also difficult to handle.

    When taking an emic perspective, the observers’ view might be biased when the observer also takes part in the activities she/he is observing.

    Determining the evaluative criteria can also be a problem since ethnographic and qualitative case study cannot adopt the evaluative criteria of quantitative studies. To solve the problem, researchers doing ethnographic and qualitative case studies can triangulate the data, which means to use three or more sources to explain and validate the data; another method for enhancing reliability and validity is contextualization. Namely, to provide a detailed description of the research setting, event or practice so that other researchers can understand and confirm the researcher’s interpretations.

    Transparency can also help to validate ethnographic and case studies. Being transparent about the procedure of the research allows other researchers to understand how the data is collected and how the result is gained, it also allows forthcoming researchers to replicate the research.  

    Ethnographic and case study allows one to understand learners’ learning process. A case study on Dynamic assessment of Chinese learners’ acquisition of a certain grammar point can be done. The researcher and three Chinese learners of different proficiency levels can meet for one hour each week for 8 weeks. Before the first meeting, a pretest on a certain grammar point can be done, and after 8 weeks of Dynamic assessment intervention, the posttest can be given. The effect of the Dynamic assessment on learners of different levels can be investigated.