Students’ ethnographic practices reflect critical conscious research in a multicultural college class

Abstract

Teaching the Issues in Multicultural Education course at a New York State
college with a diverse population highlights the necessity to address current
complex societal topics. The course’s methodological framework is ingrained in
the democratic ideas of tolerance, justice, and agency. This article describes an
interdisciplinary college course, which allows students to practice ethnographic
methods in order to re-conceptualize and confront stereotypes and social
constructions. Through a formal mini ethnographic project, students
documented their observations and interactions of a religious institution within a
community. The oral and written presentations from this field-based research
displayed that students became critically conscious of others’ communal
practices when they investigated the sites from a first-hand account.