Educational anthropology

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.^[5] 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.