Articles that are concerned with ethnographic studies of schooling and learning in order to discuss the contribution of ethnographic inquiry to teacher education are reviewed. The first section of the paper divides the literature on the ethnography of schooling and learning into three types: (1) articles that address theoretical and methodological concerns related to doing ethnography in educational settings; (2) studies of interactions among participants in educational settings; and (3) studies about the relationship and collaboration between researchers and educational practitioners. The second section of the paper contains reflections on the contributions this literature can make to the training of teachers in two specific areas: (1) development of skills in critical analysis that will allow teachers to interpret, critique, and digest what others are saying and writing; and (2) development of observation skills that will allow teachers to find out for themselves what is happening in their own classrooms. Ethnographic descriptions of life in classrooms, with their detailed accounts of the lives, actions, thought, and perception of persons involved in educational settings, can be used as case materials to help teachers and potential teachers think in more differentiated ways about what happens in educational settings. (LC)