Educational anthropology, or the anthropology of education, is a sub-field of socio-cultural anthropology that focuses on the role that culture has in education, as well as how social processes and cultural relations are shaped by educational settings.[1] To do so, educational anthropologists focus on education and multiculturalism, educational pluralism, culturally relevant pedagogy and native methods of learning and socializing. Educational anthropologists are also interested in the education of marginal and peripheral communities within large nation states.[2] Overall, educational anthropology tends to be considered as an applied field, as the focus of educational anthropology is on improving teaching learning process within classroom settings.[3] 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.[4] 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.
As education involves understandings of who we are, the field is centrally concerned with cultural transmission.[5] [6] Cultural transmission involves the transfer of a sense of identity, both individual and collective, between generations, sometimes via enculturation[7] and sometimes through acculturation. Accordingly, educational anthropology has become increasingly focused on ethnic identity and cultural change and transformation.[8] [9]
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.[10] 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.[11]
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.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14] 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.[15] 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).[16] These conversations around pedagogies that are empowering and highlight the cultural and linguistic capital of students are ongoing.
Education anthropology is typically considered to have originated in the mid-1920s, with field consolidation occurring in the 1950s and 1960s and spurring the theoretical shifts that define the field into the 21st century. The history of the field is intertwined with the history of Teachers College, Columbia University. In 1896, Franz Boas established the department of anthropology at Columbia;[17] it was only two years later, in 1898, that Teachers College was founded.[18] Although it was not until 1935 that a course entitled "Anthropology and Education" was offered, some students trained in both programs, including Elsie Clews Parsons. In 1947, Margaret Mead began a formal relationship with Teachers College from the department of anthropology at Columbia. This mirrored the change to the overall field, in which Anthropology and Education (and the corresponding Council on Anthropology and Education) were formed by Margaret Mead, Solon Kimball, and Conrad Arensberg at Columbia, as well as George Spindler and colleagues at Stanford.
For educational anthropology in the United Kingdom, the 1930s saw social anthropology that ethnographically considered educational forms of the Tallensi and Tikopia people, done by Meyer Fortes and Raymond Firth.[19] However, there was limited crossover between American cultural anthropologists and British social anthropologists studying educational forms and functions until World War II, which fundamentally altered the geographic and theoretical scope of American cultural anthropology.
In 1954, George Spindler convened the first Educational Anthropology Conference at Stanford, which was supremely influential in moving educational anthropology out of its formative years and into the field consolidation that defined the 1960s. As such, Education and Anthropology (1955), edited by George Spindler, is upheld as one of the earliest texts that argued for and illustrated the distinct presence of educational anthropology as a subfield of cultural anthropology. This edited work is a report of the 1954 conference and includes papers including "Anthropology and Education: An Overview" (George Spindler), "The Method of Natural History and Education Research" (Solon Kimball), and "Discrepancies in the Teaching of American Culture" (Dorothy Lee).[20]
Into the 1960s, educational anthropology encountered two key Marxist critiques of education. One was a structural Marxist critique of capitalist schooling and school socialization as a means of producing obedient workers; the other was the rise of Paulo Freire's liberation theology and transformational praxis.[21] Although Freire's work was taken up in force by scholars such as Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren, many educational anthropologists did not engage closely with the Marxist critique of class formation in the 1970s, choosing instead to address deficit ideologies of non-hegemonic cultural and linguistic practices within schools.
Into the 1980s, anthropological theorizations of culture shifted to emphasize the role of practice and performance within culture, including the work of Sherry Ortner (1984)[22] and George Marcus and Michael Fischer (1986).[23] These coincided with the rise of European Sociology of Education, a theoretical turn that references the emerging incorporation of Bourdieu and Gramsci. This turn influenced how educational anthropologists thought about education in terms of cultural production and class culture.
The 1990s witnessed a surge of educational anthropology that thought about the role educational institutions take in promoting social justice and began to take activist, engaged stances in regards to their work. This has led to educational ethnographies that take on participatory action research and other collaborative methodologies to address the reification of inequity within schooling. In tandem with this, more research has looked into minority education and multilingual education, shifting into considerations of culturally sustaining, relevant, and responsive pedagogies.[24] These pedagogical considerations persist into the present day.
The Council on Anthropology and Education is the section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) that is dedicated to the study of schooling within their sociocultural contexts.[25] Founded in 1968, the CAE presents their mission as necessarily responsive to oppression and social injustice in ways that bring together educators, anthropologists, and interdisciplinary scholars to fight for equitable educational systems. Their peer-reviewed journal is Anthropology & Education Quarterly (AEQ), which is one of the 15 journals the AAA makes available through AnthroSource. There are 15 interest groups within CAE:[26]
| Council on Anthropology and Education | |
| Formation: | 1968 |
| Abbreviation: | CAE |
| Products: | Anthropology & Education Quarterly |
| Leader Title: | President |
| Leader Name: | Angelina E. Castagno |
| Parent Organization: | American Anthropological Association |
| Budget: | $200,000 USD |
| Website: | https://cae.americananthro.org/ |
| Region Served: | United States of America |
Additionally, 7 annual awards are offered each year by CAE:[27]
Some of the main journals in the field include:[28]