For my Participant Observations, I have chosen a selective approach rather than an overt, all encompassing one in order to limit the data to a manageable and assessable amount. Instead of paying attention to the lecturers’ and tutors’ every move and word, I focussed only on those aspects of their style of teaching which seemed to be most uncommon compared to other classes.

As I myself was a student of the classes I examined, my level of participation was very high. By the time I was allowed to conduct participant observations by the ethics committee of the university, the semester was almost over and I was highly familiar with the procedures of the classes. I had gone native to a certain degree.

To check and back up the data derived from the participant observations late in the semester, I looked back at the notes I took during the semester and thought about which other aspects I remembered from earlier class sessions. What captured my attention during the first weeks of class? What do I remember as extraordinary?

Afterwards, I turned my notes from the participant observations as well as from reflections of earlier classes into thickly descriptive texts which you can find here.

To learn more about the methods themselves, please click here for Participant Observations and here for Thick Descriptions.

For a reflection on my use of Participant Oberservation and Thick Description, please click here.