Revisiting ‘ethnographic monitoring’ as a force for democratisation and social impact in adult literacy and language learning

We document and reflect on the use of 'ethnographic monitoring' (Hymes, Dell. 1980a. "Ethnographic Monitoring." In Language in Education: Ethnolinguistic Essays, edited by Dell Hymes. Washington, DC: Centre for Applied Linguistics) and its deployment for democratisation and social impact within our project Unlock. In Unlock we study the literacy and language learning trajectories of adult Dutch-as-L2 learners in and outside school. The 'monitoring' is a collaborative process of researching, co-creating and implementing learning practices together with practitioners and learners. We describe how we situated these practices within an 'empowering academic collaborative centre' as a platform for sharing experiences and emerging knowledges amongst academic and non-academic experts.