Commercial ethnography

1. Commercial ethnography What are literacy researchers doing in the mall? Sophie Rainbird and Sue Nichols CREd Seminar 9th October 2009

2. Project • Parents' Networks: the circulation of knowledge about children's literacy learning • ARC Discovery project (DP0772700) • 3 year funding since 2007 • Sue Nichols, Helen Nixon and Jennifer Rowsell • Three sites: 1) small rural community outside of Adelaide, SA 2) larger outer suburb of Adelaide, SA 3) suburban, university town in Princeton, NJ

3. Our Questions • How are resources for early learning produced for and circulated among parents? • How are resources spatially located and networked in community, government and commercial spaces? • What messages do these resources and practices send? • The interactions between all these elements.

4. Project Elements • Ecological theory • Geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) • Ethnographic approach

5. Ecological theory • Neuman and Celano (2001) • traditional ethnographic methods of observation and interviewing combine with • spatially oriented methods (walking streets, drawing detailed maps, inventory production)

6. Is research in commercial spaces educational research? Brofenbrenner’s ecological theory (1996)

7. Geosemiotics “the study of the social meaning of the material placement of signs and discourses and of our actions in the material world” • Social actor - the habitus of individual people • Interaction order – in which people conduct their social lives • Visual semiotics – the discourses of images and texts which people encounter • Place semiotics – in which all of the above happens including all other sign equipment and their emplacement or location in time and space in the material world Scollon & Scollon (2003) Discourses in Place, Pg 166.

8. Semiotic aggregate • The ways in which, in some complex places such as malls or busy city intersections, “multiple semiotic systems [are] in a dialogical interaction with each other” as discourses converge in time and space (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 12). • There are multiple potential and actual interactions, texts, pathways and signals about how to read and act in relation to signs and spaces

9. Data analysis: geographic, social and virtual affordances • Spatial context – where is this text/display/shop? What kind of space is this? How easy is it to find/reach/see? • Cost – how much time/money/effort does it take to: get to this place/access this resource/take this thing home? • Social relations – which people are hailed to read this text/come to this place and which people do? • Mobility – how do information resources move in and out of this space? • Networking – what kinds of connections are made between information resources in different spaces and across material and virtual spaces?

10. Place context Spatial context Immediate semiotic context Specific Resource

11. Why ethnography? • Ethnography = ‘people-writing’ • Ethnographic approach • In-situ • In-depth • Small-scale, bounded • Contextual • Exploratory • To assess what we think people do • To understand relationships between people and things • To look at relations, flows, processes

12. Methods • Site location mapping • Photography • Collection of artefacts • ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH • Observations • Interviews • ECOLOGICAL SURVEY • Audit / inventory

13. Reconnaissance phase • collection of existing data e.g. maps, websites, telephone book entries; • travelling around the site, in car and on foot taking various trajectories; • photographic documentation and field notes • drawing of site boundaries using Google Earth • listing all services and contacting them for permission to conduct inventory of resources.

14. Immersion phase • visited each commercial and public service within the site boundary • conducted systematic documentation of all early learning artefacts visible in particular spaces such as shops, clinic waiting rooms etc • defocused observation - ‘hanging around’ • sustained ethnographic participant observation at some sites • surveyed parents • interviewed parents and information workers.

15. Gumtree Plaza • Gumtree Plaza • Located in a north-eastern suburb 10 miles from the centre of a state capital city, the mall was opened in 1970. • Hub • a large covered area on multiple levels containing an abundance of shops, a food court, and a cinema complex. • 237 shops included 2 newsagents, 3 supermarkets, 3 variety stores, 2 chemists, a shop run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and a book store.

17. Surrounding area

18. Commercial stores

19. Observation the spaces used by (families, parents, parent with 1 child, couples etc.) browsing, purchasing, comparing, trying out times are parents likely to access. (eg child & youth parent group) purchase a toys for a birthday, supply child with toy in exchange for their silence

20. Site location • built environment, store layout, design, etc. • People’s movements through these sites and use of space • Eg. Westfield • Mapping • Photography

21. Ecological survey • Audit of resources (posters, pamphlets, books, toys, magazines) available to parents

22. Written documents, • e.g. Pamphlets, posters, advertising, web pages, books, magazines

23. Toys Series of toys Sheer magnitude Photography

24. Text • Product information (age group, suitability, benefits, language etc) • Eg Hot Wheels Little Learner Laptop • "designed for preschool and nursery levels"; "teaches letters, builds vocabulary, introduces shapes and colours, teaches numbers and counting, develops logic and memory skills, develops hand-eye coordination, teaches upper and lower case letters, develops music appreciation"

29. Books from commercial outlets

30. All books across the field site

31. Inside the ABC shop Gumtree Plaza Books, spin-off merchandise from ABC and BBC TV shows, and Reading Eggs literacy materials displayed

32. What is ABC Reading Eggs? ABC Reading Eggs is a highly innovative program based on the latest research, designed to make learning to read easy and fun by combining books with online reading games and activities. And it works! We’ve had great feedback from thousands of satisfied parents whose children are learning to read. Children love the games, songs, golden eggs and other rewards which, along with reading success, really motivates children to keep learning.

33. Online ‘ABC branded stores’ for themed merchandise ‘Reggie’ animated welcome Tally of Games Bought – formerly ‘Lessons Completed’ View of RE world with animated avatars

34. Difficulties in carrying out an ecological survey • Scale • Time • Manpower • Consent • Are we after hard numbers? • A greater focus on auditing may take time, and manpower away from the necessary qualitative aspect.

35. What we expected to find (but didn’t) • Common artefacts circulating networks  • We found common/popular resources across commercial outlets but parents had different ideas (from commercial outlets and from each other) as to which resources they found useful • Greater number of resources available at commercial sites  • Greater number available at government sites  • Parents commonly access resources in known commercial outlets • Parents access resources in a variety of different ways including mail order 

36. Thank you! Questions?