| Recorded information---records, documents, paperwork---is a pervasive part of any school environment. Records are created and accumulated by teachers, administrators, and students as they go about their daily lives. In this dissertation study I examine how and why one class of fifth grade students create and use records, and what function these records play within the elementary school.; This research views school records as social entities and, as such, seeks to understand how records are produced, maintained, and used in socially organized ways. Ethnographic methods as well as questions drawn from the micro-sociological approach of ethnomethodology are used to understand (1) what is going on in the classroom with regard to record creation and use, (2) what students have to know (individually and collectively) to create, maintain, and read records in a school context, and (3) what the record embodies and achieves in this social setting.; The research findings are centered on the ethnomethodological concept of membership and as such are predicated on the notion that "being a student is a job." The first findings chapter uncovers the stock of knowledge, which students were learning as part of the "hidden curriculum," that dealt in some way with record creation and use. This chapter also looks at how the processes of record creation and use can be understood from an ethnomethodological perspective. The second findings chapter draws from both naturalistic and ethnomethodological notions about both the existence and the purposes behind the informal aspects of organizational life. This chapter focuses on what students can achieve of their own volition outside of the formal rules structure of the classroom. In particular, the focus is on what students achieved through the creation and use of what are referred to as unofficial or informal literacies. |
