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Educational anthropology

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Educational anthropology is largely associated with the pioneering work of Margaret Mead and later, George Spindler, Solon Kimball, Dell Hymes, and Jean Lave. The formative years of educational anthropology (1925-1954) were defined by ethnography in classrooms that maintained views of the researcher as a detached observer and grew out of research on Native American personality, education, and administration. During the 1970s, educational anthropology became more consolidated as a field of study particularly due to the influence of professors at Teachers College, Columbia University. The focus of educational anthropology is broadly situated around the many forms of education, although an anthropological approach to education tends to focus on the cultural aspects of education, encompassing both informal and formal education.

Theories and methods

As education involves understandings of who we are, the field is centrally concerned with cultural transmission. Cultural transmission involves the transfer of a sense of identity, both individual and collective, between generations, sometimes via enculturation and sometimes through acculturation. Accordingly, educational anthropology has become increasingly focused on ethnic identity and cultural change and transformation.

Ethnography remains the primary mode of anthropological fieldwork within anthropological studies of education. Educational studies themselves have historically been critiqued for relying too heavily on statistical data and other empirical findings to make wide-sweeping claims; however, early educational anthropologists advocated for the importance of participant observation as an ethnographic method in order to contextualize schooling practices. In the 1970s, three foci of anthropological ethnographies of education were articulated as follows: (1) the relationship between schools and their sociocultural contexts; (2) processes and practices of teaching and learning; and (3) the relationships between students, between teachers, and between teachers and students.

Although a wide variety of anthropological theorizations around pedagogy and educational praxis persist, there are three frameworks that are central to understanding educational anthropology as a field. The first is the cultural deficit framework, which posits that students have internal deficiencies limiting their educational achievement that stem from their culture, linguistic background, family, and personal traits, among many other factors. This model of thinking places responsibility upon individuals, rather than educational institutions themselves, for student success. The second overarching theoretical framework is that of the cultural difference theory. This lens argues that students from different cultures approach and understand education differently based on their upbringing and cultural beliefs, values, and traditions. The final theoretical framework that is central to the field is cultural ecological theory. This approach, credited to John Ogbu, considers the broad impacts of culture, the sociocultural settings of educational institutions, and the historical ramifications of inequity in order to fully contextualize each student's encounter with schooling. Ogbu's work was centered around minority education, thinking about the internal and external reasons behind student "success" in ways that were cross-cultural and refused deficit ideologies.

Questions of minority education have dominated educational anthropological thinking in the 21st century, particularly in relationship to multilingual students. As a result, educational anthropology has increasingly grappled with ideas of culturally relevant pedagogies (CRP), culturally responsive pedagogies, and culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP). These conversations around pedagogies that are empowering and highlight the cultural and linguistic capital of students are ongoing.

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