Creating a temporary community? An ethnographic study of a residential fieldtrip

Abstract

This paper explores the evolving perceptions of community sentiments, for three teachers and 36 AS-level students on a week-long residential fieldtrip. For this in-depth study I adopted an ethnographic methodology in which I participated in, observed and recounted some of the complex and fluid spatial arrangements and processes, analysing their influence on social relationships and attitudes to learning at a UK residential field study centre. Whilst seemingly offering a different and more informal educational setting from school, I argue that the accompanying teachers attempted to influence proceedings through spatial management to meet some of their explicitly declared aims for the trip. Furthermore I argue that the physical isolation of the centre, together with the deliberately managed exclusion of external influences, effectively created a bounded setting, thereby temporarily replicating some of the characteristics associated with traditional notions of community. Within this teacher-shaped environment evolving relationships linked to the new place setting, together with impromptu communitas moments, contributed to community sentiments in line with more contemporary interpretations of the concept.

Keywords:

• community
• ethnography
• place
• social relationships
• space

Notes

1. Institutions have been given pseudonyms.

2. Teachers are anonymised by title and surname, pupils by Christian name.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nick Gee

Nick Gee is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of East Anglia. He has responsibility for the Secondary Geography PGCE(M) course, in addition to leading a module on Environmental Education and Outdoor Learning on the BA Education degree. He holds a degree in geography from the University of Oxford and is currently the Associate Dean for Admissions in the Faculty of Social Sciences.