1 “We Need Both”: Combining Video-Cued Multivocal Ethnographic Methods and Traditional Fieldwork in Samoan Head Start Policy Research ALLISON STERLING HENWARD Penn State University RONALD T URITURI University of Hawaiʻ i at Mānoa MENE TAUAA University of Hawaiʻ i at Mānoa This article describes how, in our research with Head Start teachers in American Samoa, we combined video-cued multivocal ethnographic method (VCE) with traditional ethnographic approaches to understand our interlocutors’ perspectives on curriculum and pedagogy, and the contrast between them and mainland US teachers using the same federally endorsed curriculum. We provide illustrative examples of how the inclusion of VCE allowed for meaningful dialogue among informants and researchers, revealing Samoan teachers’ cultural sustainable approaches to curriculum. [Policy, Head Start, multivocal video-cued ethnography, post-colonial theory] Introduction The collaborative ethnographic research project Negotiating Head Start Curriculum in the Pacific (Lassiter 2005) was developed in partnership with local Samoan teacher- educators, Samoan early childhood educators, and early childhood faculty at the University of Hawai ʻi at Mānoa. A key aim of the project was to understand how federal policy (in this case, Head Start curricular mandates and Head Start performance stan- dards) was interpreted and negotiated by Head Start teachers, directors, and instruc- tional leaders in American Samoa. Head Start is considered the “premier” federally sponsored early childhood education program in the US (Bierman et al. 2008). Developed as a component of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, it aimed to reduce socio-economic disparities in school read- iness through comprehensive education and social services for children and families (Bierman et al. 2008; U. S. Department of Health & Human Services 2005). In 2007, Head Start’s federal reauthorization introduced new performance standards, which included the requirement for implementation of research-based curriculum in all Head Start centers in the US and US territories (Zigler and Styfco 2010). To comply with these new mandates, the Samoan early childhood education office, like the vast majority of Head Start grantees in the US (Hulsey et al. 2011) adopted Creative Curriculum, a commer- cialized curriculum with specific, detailed topics of study, daily schedules, and scripted, preplanned lessons to be used in Samoa’s seventy-one preschool classrooms. Teachers in Samoa, therefore, had to replace their existing locally developed curricula. Our prelim- inary fieldwork suggested that Samoan Head Start teachers were faced with a dilemma of having to choose between federal pressures, which they felt reflected westernized, US Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 0, Issue 0, pp. 1–7, ISSN 0161-7761, online ISSN 1548-1492. © 2019 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/aeq.12298