Observing a Social Learning Space: A Summary of an Ethnographic Project in Progress

Abstract

This paper is a brief summary of an ethnographic research project currently in progress. Although the authors plan to present multiple papers based on the research, this paper has been written with the purpose of documenting progress so far. The main aims are to keep colleagues informed and to ensure that all of the steps are recorded to aid future dissemination of the findings. The authors summarize a project which started in June 2017 and will continue for several years observing student behaviors occurring in one social learning space in the Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) at Kanda University of International Studies (KUIS).

Ethnographies of Self-Access Language Learning

“…For example, Murray, Fujishima, Uzuka and colleagues published several books and papers based on ethnographic data from a five-year study of a self-access learning space in Okayama, Japan (Murray, 2018;Murray & Fujishima, 2013, 2016Murray et al, 2014). Inspired by this work in particular, myself and a group of colleagues have recently completed an ethnography of a social learning space in our own context (Burke et al, 2018;Mynard et al, 2020). Taking an ethnographic approach allowed us to explore phenomena happening in a specific area of our SALC-the conversation lounge-in great depth with insights from learners' voices, spanning four years or more.…”