(Re)Presenting the subject: a critical reflection on the use of ethnographic documentary video with students of colour in K-12 urban school settings

ABSTRACT

This paper illustrates how ethnographic video was used as part of a diversity education project at a public urban middle school in Los Angeles, California in the United States. The goal of this article is twofold: first, it is to describe one way in which ethnographic video can be used as a pedagogical tool in primary and secondary school settings. Second, it is to provide an experimental example of an evaluative audience reception study. The article describes the genesis of this project, explicates the intentionality of using an affective theoretical framework to interpret the project, and finally presents an evaluative audience reception study of the video in order to realise fulfilment of that goal. The results show that through this ethnographic video project, viewers were able to enter into a change space of relation, position themselves in the world, and recognise their own contextualised privilege.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnographic documentary video
• ethnography
• education
• diversity
• cultural studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Deborah Ribera http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7752-7925

Notes

1 Beyond the Block is an educational non-profit organisation dedicated to producing and presenting diversity education materials for students of colour who are at-risk of school dropout.

2 A more thorough discussion of ethnographic video production, as well as a critically reflexive analysis of my subject position and the impact it had on the video, is explored in my dissertation.

3 The student survey responses are pre-existing data that are the property of Beyond the Block. Survey data were anonymised by a third party and entered into a spreadsheet.