17
Overreliance on educational tests permits researchers and edu
cators to know students only psychometrically. Test performance does
not reveal a full view of students' skills and abilities. No one
measure is an adequate assessment of competence. The importance of a
greater awareness of the cultural norms within and outside the specific
community being studied can not be overrated. It is necessary to use
the school community as a wider context in which to focus attention
because there is greater potential for understanding behavior by com
paring that behavior or event with cultural events of the broader
community (Gilmore & Smith, 1982).
The purpose of ethnography in educational research, according to
Wilson (1977), is to allow the researcher to investigate events as they
occur in the everyday setting and to thus generalize the research
findings to the larger world where similar events and participants exist
Wilson (1977) believes, however, the presence of the researcher in
fluences the participants and may cause them to have a ". . sus
piciousness of the intent of the researcher, a sense of the behavior
that is either appropriate or expected, a special interpersonal re
lationship with the experimenter, and a desire to be evaluated
positively" (p. 49). The researcher must be aware of these influences
and consider them in interpreting data gathered through interaction
with participants. Additionally, the researcher must interpret feelings
thoughts, and actions as the participants involved would, as well as
from a perspective of an outsider by seeking a variety of sources of
information upon which to establish internal and external reliability
and validity (Le Compte & Goetz, 1982).