Educational Anthropology: An Overview of Culture, Education, and Society

Educational anthropology is a subfield of sociocultural anthropology that explores the role of culture in education and how social processes and cultural relations are shaped by educational settings. It examines educational processes in various settings, including schools, families, community centers, and non-conventional educational environments.

The Roots of Educational Anthropology

The anthropology of education is an interdisciplinary field with roots in nineteenth-century anthropology. It became structured over the twentieth century through the engagement of anthropologists and educators who examined notions of culture, particularly in non-Western groups. Anthropological interest in educational problems, practices, and institutions can be traced back to Edgar I. Hewett's articles in the American Anthropologist, "Anthropology and Education" (1904) and "Ethnic Factors in Education" (1905). Hewett advocated for incorporating ethnological and cultural history into public school curricula, joint meetings of education and anthropology societies, and the inclusion of anthropological studies in teacher training.

As early as 1913, Maria Montessori drew on physical anthropology to inform her work with children, emphasizing developmental processes, respect for individual differences, and the study of local conditions. Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology, argued in his 1928 book Anthropology and Modern Life that anthropological research could help educators better understand cultural notions of child development.

From the 1890s through the early 1950s, anthropologists conducted intensive fieldwork in small communities, using participant observation to understand the culture or ways of life of particular groups. These ethnographic methods allowed researchers to detail the "total way of life" of a group, including language use, enculturation of the young, and formal and informal education. Anthropologists were particularly interested in cultural maintenance (how cultures are continued across generations) and cultural acquisition (how people get culture). Much of this early descriptive work aimed to capture indigenous cultures before they were transformed by contact with other cultures, particularly Western cultures.

Elizabeth Eddy (1985) described 1925 through 1954 as the formative years of anthropology and education, when many anthropologists documented formalized systems of education and the enculturation of children. Major contributors included Gregory Bateson, Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, John Dollard, John Embree, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Felix Keesing, Ralph Linton, Bronislaw Malinowski, Margaret Mead, Hortense Powdermaker, Paul Radin, Robert Redfield, Edward Sapir, and W. Lloyd Warner.

Read also: Overview of UCLA Anthropology

Solidification and Theoretical Development

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. Ethnography remains the primary mode of anthropological fieldwork within anthropological studies of education. 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.

Cultural Deficit Framework

The cultural deficit framework posits that students have internal deficiencies limiting their educational achievement, stemming from their culture, linguistic background, family, and personal traits. This model places responsibility for student success on individuals rather than educational institutions.

Cultural Difference Theory

The cultural difference theory argues that students from different cultures approach and understand education differently based on their upbringing and cultural beliefs, values, and traditions.

Cultural Ecological Theory

Cultural ecological theory examines the relationships between culture, environment, and education, considering how cultural adaptation influences educational outcomes.

Key Concepts in Educational Anthropology

Culture

Culture is a pattern of knowledge, skills, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and material artifacts produced by a human society and transmitted from one generation to the next. It is goal-oriented and a system of norms and controls designed to govern behavior. Symboling, or the bestowing of meaning upon objects and actions, is critical in the development of culture. Culture is pervasive and impacts nearly every aspect of human life.

Ethnicity, Minority Groups, and Identity

Ethnicity refers to the identification of a group based on a perceived cultural distinctiveness expressed in language, music, values, art, styles, literature, family life, religion, ritual, food, naming, public life, and material culture. A minority group is a group whose unique cultural characteristics are perceived to be different from those characterizing the dominant groups in society. Identity refers to both group self-awareness of common unique characteristics and individual self-awareness of inclusion in such a group.

Educational anthropologists regard ethnicity, race, and minority groups as social and cultural constructs, not biological ones. The formation and perception of identities result from the operation of specific social, cultural, political, and economic relationships over a long period of historical time.

Enculturation and Learning

From its inception, anthropology has been concerned with the processes that transform an infant with indefinite potential into an adult with a particular role in a particular group. To achieve adulthood, an infant must learn, and much of that learning depends on how the adults around them organize themselves. A child’s education takes place not only in schools and other formalized institutions but also through the unfocused processes that inform family and community life. Thus, anthropologists investigate the psychological processes of enculturation and the social processes involved in ensuring that the various human roles that form the web of a complex society are reproduced over the generations.

Learning is at the root of most definitions of culture. From the cultural perspective, learning activates human possibilities and shapes them to fit a particular human environment or “culture.” This process has many facets, including, for example, who attends to a child (mother, older children, other caregivers), when (at various times in the day and over the years), and with what consequences (some organizations are better in allowing children to achieve particular possibilities-failure at school, romantic genius, sensitive husband and father-as these might be mentioned in a eulogy). Without extensive and long-term interaction with adults, human infants cannot develop fully. Human reproduction is not solely a genetic or psychological process; it is also a sociocultural one that produces people with particular abilities specialized for particular positions (and often exhibiting particular disabilities when assuming positions to which they are not suited).

Interest in what is known as the “distribution of knowledge” has transformed enculturation studies and is beginning to converge with work in settings where education is formalized, particularly schools. Through these institutions complex societies reproduce their social organization.

Schools and the Transmission of Culture

Schools play a significant role in transmitting culture, whether they are intended to reproduce or transform societies. The history of schooling in America tells a story of the transmission of the dominant culture, even when the rhetoric surrounding schooling suggested otherwise. Throughout different periods, schools have been viewed as mechanisms for Americanization, assimilation, and cultural pluralism.

Puritan Perspective (1647-1870): Schools were viewed as a primary mechanism of Americanization, intended to enculturate white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) students and acculturate those from different heritages.
Keeping America American (1870-1920s): Schools were used to assimilate immigrants, expecting them to divest themselves of their own culture.
The Melting Pot Ideal (1920s - 1965): Educational rhetoric promoted a synthesized culture from diverse elements, but in reality, it often resulted in the dominance of Anglo-Saxon culture.
The Great Society & Beyond: Educational policy attempted to address social and economic inequality through compensatory education programs, but critics argued that such programs were modeled on a deficit view of minorities.
Cultural Pluralism: Education in the United States has moved toward valuing diversity, with cultural pluralism as an ideal that seeks to encourage cultural diversity and a basis of unity.

Methodologies in Educational Anthropology

Ethnography

Ethnography is a primary research method in educational anthropology. It involves immersing oneself in a culture or community to understand the perspectives, behaviors, and social dynamics of the people within it. Ethnographic research typically involves participant observation, interviews, and the collection of artifacts and documents.

Comparative Method

The comparative method involves comparing different cultures or societies to identify similarities and differences in their educational practices and beliefs. This method helps anthropologists understand the diversity of human experience and the ways in which culture shapes education.

Applications of Educational Anthropology

Educational anthropology has numerous applications in education and policymaking. It can be used to:

Understand the cultural factors that influence student learning and achievement.
Develop culturally relevant pedagogy that is responsive to the needs of diverse learners.
Promote educational equity and social justice.
Inform educational policy and practice.
Improve communication and collaboration between educators, students, and families from different cultural backgrounds.

Current Trends in Educational Anthropology

Focus on Social Justice

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.

Questions of Minority Education

Questions of minority education have dominated educational anthropological thinking in the 21st century, particularly in relationship to multilingual students.

Organizations and Resources

Council on Anthropology and Education (CAE)

The Council on Anthropology and Education is a unit within the American Anthropological Association (AAA) dedicated to the study of schooling within sociocultural contexts. 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.

Teachers College, Columbia University

Within Columbia University, Teachers College has been a pioneer in exploring how anthropology can be engaged in public conversations about practical matters. This has led to the creation of two academic programs, one in Anthropology and Education and the other in Applied Anthropology.

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