Economics and Social Geography observation report

Requirements and guidelines for observations and report
” Include a copy of your field notes with your final submission (if your notes are handwritten you do not need to type them all up, photos of the pages in your notebook will suffice)
” Include a thesis statement
” Address the three sets of questions listed below to structure/frame both your fieldnotes and your written report
” Include two examples of how your experiences connect to other class material on labor experiences around the world
” Conclude with how your ideas and experiences of work relate to the concept of global citizenship

Key questions:
” Set of questions 1: Making work count
o What kinds of work do you do? How much work is not paid work? (see iceberg graphic for examples of unpaid work)
o How do all the forms of work we do create value?
o In what ways do the unpaid forms of work we do contribute to and/or constrain forms of paid work, whether for ourselves or others? (e.g. role of commuting, making food to eat, doing laundry, child care, etc)
o How is value distributed? (e.g. what kind of work is paid, how much, and who captures the surplus value produced?)
” Set of questions 2: Discipline and learning
o What skills are required for the different types of work you do? (note: think about both hard and soft skills, examples of the latter include time management and other self-disciplinary skills, interpersonal skills, etc)
o Where do you learn those skills? (e.g. the family, schools, at work)
” Set of questions 3: Control in life and work
o What do you have control over? What do you not have control over? What are your expectations of control for different kinds of work? What are your expectations for and terms of control in non-work contexts?
o What forms of consent does the wage stand-in for at your work? (e.g. who, what, where, when, how, safety, and duration)
o What control or choice do you have to do the kind of work you do in the first place? What does this mean for how you define choice or control?
Extra notes:
” What do I mean by global citizenship? Global citizenship is becoming a critical concern in education, including at OSU who not only currently links certain GE requirements to an understanding of global citizenship, but also plans to revamp the entire required general education curriculum around further prioritizing the goal of teaching students to become global citizens. In turn, the term has become a “buzzword” and used in various ways. However, if we break the terms down into global and citizenship, we can understand the reference to a new collective identity that has emerged with our increasingly interconnected globe, especially through the integration of economic systems. In other words, I want to know how your experiences as a worker is not only locally isolated nor even just a national phenomenon but also part of a global system.

” What are field notes? “Refers to notes created by the researcher during the act of qualitative fieldwork to remember and record the behaviors, activities, events, and other features of an observation. Field notes are intended to be read by the researcher as evidence to produce meaning and an understanding of the culture, social situation, or phenomenon being studied” (Schwandt, Thomas A. The SAGE Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry. 4th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2015.)
o Resource on writing field notes

Fieldwork notes attached
10 pts: Sufficient notes attached (>2 pages) Thesis/argument
5 pts: Illustrates ability to synthesize ideas and experiences and express ideas clearly
Draws on class material (2 times adequately)
10 pts: Two explicit connections to class material
Addresses the 3 sets of specific questions listed under requirements
30 pts: Addresses all three sets of questions sufficiently
Addresses connection to global citizenship
10 pts: Explains a logical connection between how we think about work and becoming global citizens