Ethnographic research: autobiographical experiences in a secondary school in the city of Mar del Plata, province of Buenos Aires

Abstract

Ethnographic research has developed widely in recent decades, it has been adopted by numerous fields of knowledge: sociology, social psychology, history, and other social disciplines. From a broad and traditional perspective, ethnography can be understood from a triple meaning: as a method, as a text, and as a perspective (Guber, 2014). We are interested in returning to this last meaning since it leads us to reflect on its complexity, beyond the spoken word, to recover the gestures, sensations, emotions, looks, sentiments that give meaning to everyday events. The multiple dimensions of knowledge that are put into play in field work as lived experience (Quirós, 2011) as researchers can be expanded and discussed by considering the fact of "letting ourselves be affected" as a methodological instrument. Accompanying and understanding the socio-educational processes in secondary school, its daily life, integrates experiences that constitute, from each particular subject, significant actions of production and social reproduction and cultural appropriation, thus daily life encompasses a large number of activities through which students, teachers, parents give existence to the school within the cultural horizon that circumscribes each community.