• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.28
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• pp.87-114
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• 2012

The Maa speaking Torobo people inhabiting the southern portion of the Mau Escarpment in Kenya approach both individual and community survival from a relational orientation focused on ethnic identity and responsibility. This social responsibility to the tribe is in stark contrast to Torobo relationships with other ethnic groups. The purpose of the research is twofold. First, the paper explores how folkloric language through a trickster image reflects important cultural and social ideals, understandings, and patterns of thought in Torobo world view. A second purpose is to offer ethnographic information to scholars and students' alike necessary for world view studies of eastern Africa specifically focused on the interplay between anthropomorphic tales and the social context in which these stories are utilized. The key research question for this analysis asks how the trickster image in Torobo folklore conceptualize the life experience. A Torobo folktale entitled, The Clever Hare, is the text chosen for analysis with the hare character as the protagonist. A second query explores the importance of the trickster image in understanding Torobo world view categories of Self and Other. The analysis contributes an ethnographic perspective for the world view categories of Self and Other as well as trickster folklore by examining the nature of Torobo-ness using the tale of the cunning hare as a research tool.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.149-159
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• 2004

An Ethnographic Decision Model (EDM) to explore socioeconomic, cultural, and psychological factors related to the attitudes toward childless family was developed in this study. From college students' protocol writings, this research found that the participants in general had conservative views about childless families. They tended to simplify childless families as either infertile couples or DINK (Double Income No Kids) couples. The participants explained why they decided to have or not to have children in the future. They seemed to believe in a traditional family structure and idealize parental roles, while recognizing the high economic and psychological cost of rearing children. They claimed that Korean society set high standards for parents, which were too difficult to reach. The participants, having been educated to believe in self-actualization through their successful careers, struggled to choose between a family with children and one without children. This study was conducted with a holistic view, and highlighted the importance of interactions between traditional ideology about the family and socioeconomic contexts when interpreting college students' perspectives on childless family.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.112-121
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• 2004

An activity of nature experience guidance can be considered as an educational event, thus, I regarded the volunteers as the guides of nature experience and examined closely their guidance activities as a participant to provide in-depth description about their behavior, context, and changes in ethnographic view. In this study I raised two following questions; 1) how have the guides been changed through two types of activities and 2) what problems are brought up in their context. First, the volunteers acquired awareness and sensitivity to the total environment and its related problems during course of training, even though they were initially motivated to participate in training course for their children. Second, guidance activity improved their basic understanding of and views toward the environment, awareness of the total environment, attitudes to environment, skills in solving environmental problems and participation levels in working towards resolution of environmental problems. However, they had difficulties in communication with each other and since nature experience guides are wives and mothers they worked against time and needed support from their family. Further studies will continue on analysis of training programs for the guides to improve and to contribute guide's positive changes to non-formal environmental education.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.33-41
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• 1995

The purpose of this study is to heighten the reusing rate of hospital making its good image ultimately and giving a feeling of satisfaction to the patients, and to suggest more pleasant and comfortable environment to the wards which the patients are spending 24 hours a day from the view of nurse. The field study was in medical ward of the C University Hospital in Seoul through ethnographic method. The data were collected through observation and interview. On the basis of the results, the ward model for 4 patients was developed so as to be able to have their own area in consideration of privacy and improvement of life level & consciousness level of patients.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.173-187
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• 2002

The purpose of this study through ethnographic inquiry is to describe how an elementary teacher teaches mathematics with understanding. The ways that teachers'beliefs affect instructional activities, what means understanding from the view of cognitive psychology, and ethnographic research tradition were reviewed to anchor theoretical background of this study. A third-grade teacher and his 45 students were selected in order to capture vivid and thick descriptions of the teaching and learning activities of mathematics. Three major sources of data, that is, participant-observation with video taping, formal and informal interviews with the teacher and his students, and a variety of official documents were collected. These data were analyzed through two phases: data analysis in the field and after the fieldwork. According to data analysis, ‘teaching mathematics with understanding’ was identified as the teachers central belief of teaching mathematics. In order to implement his belief in teaching practices, the teacher made use of three strategies: ⑴ valuing individual student's own way of understanding, ⑵ bring students' everyday experiences into mathematics classroom, and ⑶ lesson objectivies stated by students. It is suggested for future research that concrete and specific norms of mathematics classroom for the improvement of mathematics understanding are needed to be identified and that experienced and skillful teachers' practical knowledge should be incorporated with theories of teaching mathematics and necessarily paid more attention by mathematics educators.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.44 no.4 s.111
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• pp.603-625
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• 2005

Identity is the concept which approaches individuals' affective problems with the social and cultural view. The previous studies on the problems, studied the attitudes, beliefs, or emotions while they restricted the problems to teachers or students' private problems. Otherwise, identities focus on individuals which participate to any community and share its social practices(Mclead, 1994). This study purposed to get an understanding on the teaching and learning mathematics in elementary mathematics classroom with an ethnographic view, while we consider mathematics as a kind of social practices, and mathematics classrooms as communities of practice. We analysed teacher's identities on mathematics and teaching mathematics depending on her responses of the questions as following: How does she think about mathematics, what are the instructional goals in her mathematics classroom, how do students learn mathematics in her mathematics classroom. In addition, we analysed students' identities on mathematics and learning mathematics depending on their responses of the questions as following: What do students think of mathematics, do they like mathematics, why do they study mathematics, how do they feel their mathematics classroom(describe your classroom) and themselves in it(describe yourselves in your classroom), what are their duties and what do they do actually in their mathematics classroom.

• Journal of architectural history
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• v.11 no.1 s.29
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• pp.65-84
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• 2002

This study has main purpose to understand and interpret the house Nok-U-dang, an upper class built in Chosun dynasty, not by outsider researcher's view but insider dweller's view. To interpret correctly, dweller's everyday life in the space and form is examined on a microscale beyond the physical space and form of the house, main object of architectural history To understand the present form exactly, the study restore traditional life in past era, 1940s. Main method of restoration is the ethnographic interview, based on cultural anthropology. Like any other upper-class house, the house has been influenced under ruling Confucian ideology in Chosun dynasty: separation of man's and woman's quarters and hierachical arrangement by generation, and worshipping ceremony for ancestor. However, it is by practical management for agricultural production that every court and building of the Noku-Dang can be explained correctly; preparing seed for sowing, tool storing, preparing and serving meal for laborers, making manure, harvesting, threshing grain, storing grain and so on. Precedent studies interpreted the house by the Confucian principle too much and made conclusion of dignity and austerity of ritual: woman's quarter, is closed and serene space. However this study shows that the space is semi-opened and composite space by agricultural works. And the Sarangchae, master's quarter, is located properly at visual center to control every agricultural activity.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.174-184
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• 2009

Purpose: While there exist a good number of studies on Korean nurses who were dispatched to Germany in 1960s and 1970s in sociological or labor economic perspectives, there have been few studies on their experiences from a nursing perspective. The purpose of this study is to recapture their lives and experiences from a nursing point of view. Methods: This paper adopts an Agar's ethnographic approach which is more suitable to investigate personal qualitative experiences of those Korean nurses. The data were collected from group discussion and individual interview, and field observation with 10 dispatched Korean nurses. Results: The experiences of those dispatched nurses to Germany can be summarized into three themes: challenging to life, embracing new life, and giving a meaning to life. Challenging to life involved 'hope and anxiety', and embracing new life was reflected by 'wonderment and envy' and 'loneliness and sorrow'. Lastly, they took pride in their contributions to their mother country and also felt something lacking that they had not been properly evaluated. Conclusion: By rediscovering their lives and experiences from a nursing perspective, this study argues for more future studies to reexamine their impact and contribution to the nursing field in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.570-581
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to analyze the acceptance and interpretation of pop musician's image in the Korean youth subculture, Fan Costume play(Fancos). Fancos subculture took the most active attitude to accepts of the pop musician's image and therefore was assumed to have various and differential acceptance aspects. The ethnographic method was used in order to approach more closely from their point of view. The cultural activity of Fancos subculture was imitation and reappearance of pop musician's appearance. Actually Fancos is a kind of fan-culture which idolized Korean pop music star. The acceptance of musician's appearance in Fancos is found out in two aspects. One is passive acceptance aspects that inforces conformity of star fashion and follows servilely ideal body image which promoted by cultural industry. The other is unique acceptance aspects that Fancos members interpret the musician's image in their own way. Those members experience pleasure through their own meaning. And homology of their appearance makes a distinction between of themselves from other youth and intensifies their group identity. As above analyzed, Fancos subculture has differential acceptance of pop music star's image comparing to other youth and even their stylistic appearance reflects not only their fandom but also their own meaning. Consequently, pop musician's image as a popular cultural text is accepted not equal to all populace but dissimilar along with contexts and trails of the acceptance group.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.7-33
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• 2021

With a view to contributing to the epistemological and methodological debates in Southeast Asian Studies, the aim of this paper is to examine critically the epistemic concepts and approaches in the social sciences and then to seek an epistemic reflexivity and its potential methodological applications to Southeast Asian Studies. Although the field of social sciences has attempted to search for a means of tackling the ontological and epistemological dilemmas in its major paradigms, Southeast Asian Studies still demands a more 'actor-centered' epistemic account of reflexive interaction between actors and social structures. Bearing in mind the need for a more 'actor-centered' epistemic approach, this paper continues to discuss the 'epistemic reflexivity' in the social sciences and its potential applications to Southeast Asian Studies. In this paper, I will consider 'epistemic reflexivity' as an alternative methodological orientation. It emerges as interlinked with the ontological standpoint of what is called 'reflexive approaches' and its application to the detailed 'reflexive methodology' which I am proposing in this paper. In doing so, this paper discusses the autobiographical experiences of the author arising from his ethnographic field research in North Sulawesi, Indonesia and their implication for a reflexive methodology in Southeast Asian Studies. In conclusion, the paper argues that we need a 'more actor-centered' epistemic framework to compensate for the epistemological and methodological dilemmas in the social sciences and the alternative framework will equip Southeast Asian Studies with a reflexive methodology relevant to the life-dynamics of the social world in the process of developing its inquiries, methodological technics, analysis, and validation.