Mobilising ethnographers investigating technologised learning

Abstract

This paper intends to problematise understandings of the ethnographer's presence in investigating contemporary forms of technologised learning. The ubiquity of new educational technologies raises questions concerning the spaces of education and learning, and challenges, at the same time, the sense of ‘being there’ in terms of the face-to-face interactions fundamental in ‘standard’ descriptions of educational ethnography. This paper – drawing theoretically on sociomaterial studies of education and on the description and comparison of two ethnographic accounts – proposes to consider ethnographer's presence while studying contemporary forms of technologised learning as embodied, distributed and mobile.

Keywords:

• ethnographer
• presence
• technologised learning
• embodied
• distributed
• mobile

Notes

1. Literally speaking, ‘individual’ means ‘not divisible’. Moreover, the very notion of the individual is often considered to be related to some spatio-temporal arrangement, that is to physical co-presence.