Negotiating a Positive Marginality for Researcher and Informant
Thomas H. Schram
University of New Hampshire
Among the many implications for ethnographers in the code
of ethics is the basic concern that people must be informed of
your roleÄwho you are and what you want. This is no less a
concern in fieldwork conducted close to home than in that done in
a remote society, and in either case requires one to balance the
requisites of gaining access with the expectation of eventual
departure. Although familiar on several levels with the public
school, the educational ethnographer remains one who does not
belong to the setting and, in negotiating from a position of both
nearness and remoteness, must come to terms with his or her
marginal status.
Managing one's marginality, generally speaking, is the
focus of this paper. The specific point I argue is that
marginality not only has several offsetting advantages for
researchers as they gain and maintain access to a public school
setting, but is a status that is conducive to the development of
an instrumentally productive, and at times therapeutic, cultural
perspective for both researcher and informant. The several
issues I will discuss were generated by my recent twelve months
of research on the high school experience of Laotian refugees in
a small northern New England community I call Newshore. My
interest in and association with individuals who were themselves
afforded marginal status within the schoolÄthe English as a
Second Language (ESL) students and instructorsÄ intensified the
challenge of negotiating a constructive and socially acceptable
role for myself within the setting. But it was not until I was
months into my study that I realized my efforts to foster a
positive status for myself were linked interdependently to
similar efforts by my key informant on the ESL staff. This was a
basic fact affecting the manner in which I subsequently presented
myself and responded to others in Newshore.
My discussion will include several interrelated issues,
each examined within the broader context of negotiating and
renegotiating entry to the research setting. These issues are (1)
how one manages the distinct intentionalities manifested in the
role of participant observer, (2) the development of shared
intentions among thoseÄboth fieldworker and informantsÄwho hold a
marginal status in the setting, and (3) the translation of shared
intentions into a positive and productive orientation toward
one's marginality. Before discussing these issues, I will
describe the background of my study, practical aspects of gaining
access to the setting, and initial responses to my presence.
Defining the Boundaries of Acceptance
Newshore High School has approximately 220 students, 9
percent of whom are Laotian students whose families have arrived
in the U.S. within the past three to ten years. The school's
small size limits the availability of course options and
extracurricular activities, and a well entrenched tracking system
provides clear, though controversial, differentiation among
students. Observations and interviews with classroom teachers
revealed a proud but fragmented faculty who find it increasingly
difficult to experience success in teaching or appreciation for
their efforts, particularly from townspeople frustrated with
costs of supporting the school for an increasingly transient
local population. The school received mixed reviews from
residents of Newshore, a "hard rock, hard knocks" former mill
town of 7,000 in which a core of families that can trace their
descent to the town's founding in the late 17th century confront
with measured reserve a small '60s counterculture community,
urban commuters seeking "the country life," and a growing
population of Laotian refugees.
I had entered Newshore with a preliminary interest in the
school adjustment patterns of the Lao adolescents. Influenced by
recent work on the role of culture in knowledge acquisition among
language minority students (e.g., Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Trueba
1988, 1990), I focused my efforts toward understanding how
teachers and students made sense of the relationship between what
was taught and what was learned in the classroom. The boundaries
of the study were determined primarily by the scope of activities
and contacts of the Lao high school students and their teachers.
To that end, my initial contacts with the school had two
components: (1) obtaining broad-based acceptance of my presence
from faculty and administration, and (2) negotiating a more
specific entry into the daily workings of the ESL instructional
program and the lives of the Lao students.
To members of the dominant faculty group at Newshore High
School, my immediate and most obvious identification as a
university researcher placed me hip-deep in the tradition of
collaborative opposition that, with few exceptions, has defined
the relationship between educational researchers and
practitioners. I responded with efforts to distance myself from
the evaluative stance I perceived Newshore teachers to expect of
educational researchers. The constant assurances I gave them that
I was not interested in assessing their professional abilities or
work-related effectiveness somehow, I hoped, would place me in a
more comfortable category of researcher. Their curiosity ("So,
what exactly does an ethnographer do?") facilitated
communication, and the relief I perceived in them when explaining
the unobtrusive nature of my work encouraged me to emphasize my
actual or imagined uniqueness still further.
As a discrete event, my introduction to the setting
reflected the protocol of a hierarchical social structure. Any
"halo effect" (Fetterman, 1989, p. 44) I might have hoped to
achieve with an introduction by the "right person" lost its
luster amid long-standing distrust and tension between Newshore
administrators and teachers. Suspicions directed by the group
toward my intermediary, the district's Coordinator of Special
Services, translated into a cautious and questioning "Well, okay,
we can see how it works" from Ann, the ESL instructor who was to
become my key informant. It was a poor introduction and I began
"in the hole" (Fetterman, 1989), overcompensating to prove myself
both nonthreatening and credible to those in the setting.
The "triple whammy" of identification with university research,
my primary association with ESL, and the challenge I faced to
disassociate diplomatically from my administrative intermediary
(while acknowledging the debt owed to that first contact) placed
me in any one of a number of categories perceived by Newshore's
staff and students: (a) I warranted casual indifferenceÄin a
social setting characterized by disconnectedness, as one teacher
noted, I was "just another person for someone not to connect
with;" (b) I warranted grudging acceptanceÄwith my focus upon the
Lao students, I was considered a manageable curiosity rather than
an intrusive presence; (c) I warranted immediate suspicionÄ"Is he
a narc?" (students) "Is he going to evaluate my methods?"
(teachers); (d) I warranted active interestÄteachers who
expressed feelings of guilt or frustration for their inability to
deal effectively with the Lao students believed I might be of
some assistance. By and large, however, both Lao and American
students and a majority of the faculty related to me with casual
indifference, a fact which highlighted for me the potential
pitfall of attributing greater significance than often is
warranted to one's presence as a fieldworker.
Managing Distinct Intentionalities
We must accept deceptionÄin some form, to some degreeÄas an
inevitable concomitant of the participant observer
experience (1984, p. 259). Alan Peshkin
The ethnographer's ability to maintain, or to pretend to
maintain, the distinct intentionalities embodied in the
oxymoronic notion of participant observation has direct bearing
upon the nature of his or her access to a setting. Crapanzano's
insight into a "dilemma of intentionality" (1980, p. 142)
highlights this dual responsibility: both to enter into and
remove oneself from the intentionally determined world of those
studied, engaging in their life yet remaining faithful to the
primary aim of conducting research. Responses to this
dilemma follow similar lines. In his explanation of the
researcher as "marginal native," Freilich (1970, p. 531) advises
holding on to one's particular research perspective through
limited participation in the cultural aspects of the studied
group (e.g., endorsement of group standards for behaving,
believing, and perceiving) and avoidance of its societal
commitments (e.g., group membership). Peshkin (1988), drawing
further upon Freilich's distinction between the conscientious
human self and the calculating researcher self (cf. Peshkin,
1984), offers the following counsel for mediating personal
discrepancies encountered in the participant observer's role:
If affection and dispassion are not antithetical, it still
seems probable that affection could block the sharp, harsh
light that dispassion usefully generates throughout one's
research process. In the large space between feelings of a
love affair, at one pole, and of a let-the-chips-fall-
where- they-may outlook, at the other, there is ample room for an
affection that serves to remind one of obligations to his
respondents, and for a dispassion that, as horseradish does
in the nasal passages, clears his vision (Peshkin, 1988, p.
20).
Although mindful of my primary data collecting purposes, I
was unabashedly un-research-like in my early presentation of self
to teachers and students. The personas I created during my first
months in Newshore were dominated by those intended to dispel the
potentially lethal link with my administrative intermediaries, to
highlight an attitude of deferred judgment, and to emphasize the
fact that I had enjoyed insider status during previous fieldwork
in public school settings. Two months were spent almost
exclusively in establishing myself among teachers and students as
a trustworthy, sympathetic, and interested observer of school
life.
The greatest challenge in this respect lay with the Lao
students, some of whom later confided in me that they had been
confused about this friendly newcomer who played no clearly
discernible role in the daily workings of the school. I had hoped
to establish myself as an instructional aide in the ESL resource
room, but had not foreseen the awkwardness of imposing my
presence upon what typically was a tutorial between Ann, the
instructor, and one or two students. I remained visible, but
settled for a period into a more passive role than originally
intended.
A good deal of useful ethnographic information was acquired
while I stumbled along in this manner, but in many areas its
accuracy subsequently proved to be wanting. Clearly, better
information was acquired by observation than by inquiry during
this trust-building period, but there was a deceptive ease with
which I identified, and others identified me, with the observer's
role. I think now that perhaps this role assumed a significance
related more to the visibility and sense of importance it
afforded me as an active researcher in the field than to its
actual and potential contribution to my developing line of
inquiry.
With my key informant Ann, on the other hand, I had begun
to experience that "unity of nearness and remoteness" that Simmel
(1964) finds in the "phenomenon of the stranger." The stranger,
notes Simmel, often receives the most surprising
opennessÄ"confidences which sometimes have the character of a
confessional and which would be carefully withheld from a more
closely related person" (1964, p. 404). Ann talked more freely as
she learned that I would respect and protect our conversations,
although I sensed that I was a "safe" confidant only insofar as I
was able to balance our collaborative exchanges with an attitude
of disciplined detachment from the setting. To the extent I was
successful in doing so, Ann and I remained "good strangers" to
one another, a circumstance that both sustained and highlighted
our respective roles as players along the margin at Newshore
High.
Developing Shared Intentions
My collaborative efforts with Ann confirmed the idea
suggested by Finley (1984), Metz (1987), and Goldstein (1988)
that teachers' status within a faculty culture is in large part
derived from the status of their students. For Ann this was a
mixed blessing. On the one hand, the Lao students displayed the
quiet, cooperative, and studious behaviors so highly valued by
Newshore's faculty. On the other hand, their status as good
behavioral and motivational models was couched in low
expectations for their academic achievement and persistent
frustration with cultural and communicative difficulties. These
latter concerns, set within a dominant school culture which
tended to group refugee and lower track students together,
sustained the Lao students' position as both social and academic
marginals. Ann's open and easy relationship with the Lao
students and her confidence in their abilities put her
concurrently on the margin of the dominant faculty group and in
the central position of mediating conflicts between the Lao
students and their regular classroom teachers. Her status was
further framed by an institutional context in which teachers
generally felt undervalued and unempowered, and which ascribed
limited influence and support to her own position as a part-time,
uncredentialed instructor. Uncertain at times of her own teaching
effectiveness yet convinced that the academic potential of the
Lao students was being undermined in many of the regular
classrooms, Ann chose to avoid strong identification with the
high school's dominant faculty group. Frustrated as well by the
disconnectedness and self-defensive posture she perceived among
the secondary teachers, she occasionally sought "philosophical
support" within the junior high wing of the building where, as
she commented, "teachers have more of an interest in what each
other is doing." But she ultimately negotiated her own
unaffiliated course between and around groups in the school,
informed and inspired by the Lao students' advocacy needs.
I had not anticipated the full implications for my research of
the differences in attributed status between Ann and the regular
classroom teachers. But because I was in almost constant
association with Ann, and was perceived as committed to the
importance of the ESL experience due to my research focus, I
realized my status and hers were to some degree interdependent.
As marginal players we shared a kind of detachment, manifested in
my case by my adherence to research aims and in Ann's case by her
independent stance on the margin of Newshore's faculty culture.
Moreover, we shared a common intention: to understand as much as
we could about the Lao students and how they made sense of their
experiences in school.
In different but mutually reinforcing ways, we were both
involved in the reshaping of that intention into a constructive
process of remediation and increased cultural awareness. Drawing
upon the Spindlers' (1982, 1989) notion of "cultural therapy," we
began to reconstruct classroom events and interactions in
cultural terms, deliberately distancing Ann from the
taken-for-grantedness of classroom life and creating
opportunities for more disciplined and directed reflection upon
her behavior and that of her students. I made explicit my role as
cultural translator and attempted to "feed back" to Ann an
objectified picture of classroom life and of the relationships in
her field of action. In adding this therapeutic orientation to
our collaborative endeavors we gained fresh insight into positive
aspects of our own marginal status.
Negotiating a Positive Marginality
Central to Ann's and my efforts was the issue of how we
used the status attributed to us to benefit ourselves and our
work. In this respect we had much in common. We acknowledged both
the boundedness and the boundary-spanning quality of our marginal
positions, and chose to emphasize the latter. This was not
necessarily the path of least resistance, but did create the
possibility of multiple bases of understanding and support.
More importantly, a positive stance toward our intermittent
obscurity and exposure along the margin sharpened the focus of
our collaborative cultural interpretations, in that we felt
well positioned to "step back" from the research setting as
needed to reflect upon actions, events, and behaviors. In turn,
however, we were denied some of the social "free play" and access
to cultural understandings made possible by a more extensive
sharing of assumptions with others in the school.
As our understanding of each other's position evolvedÄAnn's
in relation to me and to the dominant faculty group, mine in
relation to Ann and to Newshore as a research siteÄit became
apparent that a positive orientation toward our marginal status
contributed significantly to our effectiveness as observers of
and participants in the setting. For whatever else was achieved
or lost by virtue of being marginal, the role as defined for each
of us offered the opportunity to test our flexibility, sharpen
our mediating skills and, in a manner akin to the Spindlers'
"constructive marginality" (1989, p. 40), to shape an
instrumentally productive cultural perspective informed by
selective identification with different groups.
Ethnographers entering the stratified world of the public
secondary school inevitably become more closely identified with
one or more levels than with others, a fact which largely
determines not only their analysis but also their continued
access to the system. My identification with a marginal
individual and program at Newshore High School carried the
potential of both distorting my perceptions of events and
enhancing my understanding of the diversity of viewpoints
represented in the setting. My effectiveness in highlighting the
latter in the final presentation of my study will reflect in
large part the manner in which I have come to terms with the
marginal status attributed to me and to my key informant.
References
Crapanzano, V. (1980). Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Fetterman, D. M. (1989). Ethnography: Step by step. Newbury
Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Finley, M. K. (1984). Teachers and tracking in a comprehensive
school. Sociology of Education, 54, 233-243.
Freilich, M. (Ed.). (1970). Marginal natives at work:
Anthropologists in the field. Cambridge, MA: Shenkman.
Goldstein, B. L. (1988). The interplay between school culture
and status for teachers of immigrant students. Educational
Foundations, 2(1), 52-76.
Metz, M. H. (1987). Teachers' pride in craft, school
subcultures, and societal pressures. Educational Policy,
1(1), 115-134.
Peshkin, A. (1984, October). Odd man out: The participant
observer in an absolutist setting. Sociology of Education,
57, 254-264.
Peshkin, A. (1988). In search of subjectivityÄone's own.
Educational Researcher, 17(7), 17-21.
Simmel, G. (1964). The stranger. In K. H. Wolff (Ed. and
Trans.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 402-408). New
York: Free Press.
Spindler, G., & Spindler, L. (1982). Roger Harker and
Schonhausen: From familiar to strange and back again. In
G. Spindler (Ed.), Doing the Ethnography of Schooling. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Spindler, G., & Spindler, L. (1989). Instrumental competence,
self-efficacy, linguistic minorities, and cultural therapy:
A preliminary attempt at integration. Anthropology and
Education Quarterly, 20(1), 36-50.
Tharp, R., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life:
Teaching, learning, and schooling in social context. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Trueba, H. (1988). Culturally based explanations of minority
students' academic achievement. Anthropology and Education
Quarterly, 19(3), 270-287.
Trueba, H. (1990). The role of culture in literacy acquisition.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,
3(1), 1-13.