Becoming an ethnographer in a Physical Education Teacher Education culture: a challenging self-knowledge journey

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to uncover a transformative journey of a novice ethnographer, as she encountered the field of ethnographic research in a Physical Education Teacher Education culture. Particularly, through an analytical autoethnography, this study will present crucial experiences recognized as fieldwork dilemmas and encounter the strategies developed in order to address them.Data was generated through a field diary and a reflexive log from participant observations, Pre-service Teachers classes, formal and informal group meetings and conversations that occurred during the 8-month internship in a school context. The findings are mainly theorized through the Foucaultian lens of power and knowledge, governmentality, ethics and care of the self, Lofland et al. (2006) strategies of ‘Getting along’ in the fieldwork and the importance of the role of ‘Critical friends’. The conclusion emphasizes the novice ethnographer self-assumptions about fieldwork; confrontation with the researcher natural desire to intervein and how this aspect was managed by purposely unplugging those desires; how the ‘access’ bounces were understood and how they were used in her benefit to generate information; and, how she dealt with failure in materializing the initial expectations of the project. Finally, this study intends to motivate other novice ethnographers to do self-analysis through autoethnography during their research journey, in order to help gather better insights of their practice and enrich their research quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Novice ethnographer⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
• Autoethnography
• Physical Education Teacher Education
• Ethnography
• Ethnographic fieldwork

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) (FCT, Portugal) through the SFRH/BD/141505/2018 grant awarded to the first author.