Framing the Methodology - Ali

This is an ethnographic study (p. 10; p. 31) that takes place over a period of one year at three different elementary schools in Bayside, California. While at each school, Lewis utilized participant observation (p.32), field notes and in-depth interviews (p.33). For her field note taking she used both hand written notes and computer typed notes while she observed. Her participation was limited to monitoring students in the classroom and on the schoolyard. She also gave one presentation. Beyond those experiences she mainly observed. Lewis completed several interviews of students, teachers, parents, school staff and school administrators. All of her interviews were formal except for some of the teachers and some students. Some of the teachers and students were informal conversation. The purpose of her ethnography was to build into an inductive theory expansion of current theories of racilization and identification (p. 32) from participant observation and in-depth interviews (p. 33). Lewis chose California and specifically Bayside because of its racial diversity and political climate (p. 34). In order to select the schools, Lewis used theoretical sampling (p. 34). She ended up “weeding” out schools to get to three different settings. These settings are: 1. Typical urban school 2. An alternative, bilingual school and 3. A suburban school (p. 35). She spent four months in each school.