The Close: 7 Level Selling

Using Ethnography to Explore Culture in the Natural and Built Environments is an enrichment program for the middle school grades, home schooled students, and beyond. Students are provided classroom and field experiences to develop skills used by anthropologists and ethnographers to research culture.

The program focuses on strengthening intercultural awareness by demonstrating the relationship that exists between man and his environment. This basic objective is accomplished by giving students the opportunity for direct observation and experience.

Student activity includes observation in the field, learning to take detailed field notes, interviewing and writing ethnographies. The culminating project of the program is the development of a cultural journal containing student ethnographies and photographs documenting their research.

The program requires creativity by teachers but provides suggested lesson plans for specific experiences that are sequenced to have a cumulative effect on the development of a specific set of skills. The program is premised on the sound educational concept that student learning of particular skills and concepts must precede from having the opportunity to practice such skills.

A Student Ethnography Handbook is included in the Teacher's Manual which can be used to create reading handouts and a stand-alone Student Ethnography Handbook is available for individual students. The Handbook has brief discussions of ethnographic research issues and titles covering, Observation, Culture and Communication, Japanese Gardens and an Interview Guide.