Interactional Ethnography

Abstract

This chapter presents the governing principles of operation and conduct and the theoretical perspectives guiding the iterative, recursive and abductive logic and actions that constitute Interactional Ethnography (IE) as a logic-of-inquiry. IE researchers aim to develop grounded understandings of learning as a socially constructed process, and how learning processes vary with actors (participants) and events being constructed which complements the goals of learning scientists. Through building purposeful archives, IE supports investigation of what is being constructed in and through micro moments of discourse-in-use, historical roots of observed phenomena, and macro level actors and sources that support and/or constrain opportunities for learning afforded to, constructed, and taken up (or not), by participants. This chapter reconstructs a published IE study as a telling case to provide a step-by-step, grounded illustration of the theoretical perspectives guiding different levels of analysis undertaken to build theoretical inferences in an IE grounded program of research. © 2018 Taylor & Francis.