This article uses the notion of a "sensitising concept" in order to understand insider and outsider dynamics in cross-organisational field research. The analysis is based on a study of learning and innovation in the social and health care educations in Denmark. As these educations combine classroom training and workplace internships, the…

This paper analyses the role that forms of documentation play in faculty members' experiences of tenure and promotion. Taking an institutional ethnography approach, it examines inconsistencies and ambiguities in documents and connects them to the experiences of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty at one institution…

The ethnography of education is challenged by the materiality of the classroom. Ethnographic accounts of school lessons mostly highlight language and interaction and offer no suitable methodology for researching objects and their role in the classroom. Moreover, objects are part of complex and interwoven assemblages involving human actors,…

This research investigates how the Hong Kong state controls and disciplines the education sector through the regulation and manipulation of discourses. The authoritative narratives are that some schools are failing the students and parents for not being able to provide quality education, and that these schools are not subject to public scrutiny…

Participatory research with young people has enjoyed a decade of sustained development including the development of a range of embodied and visual methodologies. Much of this has been in the service of a participatory citizenship agenda, as articulated in the Every Child Matters agenda in England, in the work of the UK's Children's Commissioners…

This article contributes to the debate on decolonising methodologies in qualitative research by considering how a white researcher can try and destabilise white supremacy when explicitly conducting research with social justice aims. It draws on data from a recent ethnographic study of minority ethnic pupils' experiences in secondary schools in…

Little work in the social sciences or in the field of education has fully explored the methodological issues related to the study of race and racism, yet qualitative researchers acknowledge that race plays (and should play) a role in the research process. Indeed, race frames and informs the context, practices and perspectives of everyday lived…

This article reports on a study of apprentices in England and Germany designed to explore young people's learner identities over time and in relation to particular learning environments. The research adopts a multi-method ethnographic approach, combining biographical interviews with multi-site participant observation. The article problematises the…

This paper explores the challenge of matching practice with the ideals of participatory research and the reflexivity and (re)negotiation of the researcher's role. We highlight the centrality of emotions to our study, both in terms of the substantive topic and our observations and experiences as researchers. Building on this experience we argue…

This study focuses on a group of highly skilled female migrants who were carers to the elderly, and the roles of education, literacy, and learning in their social networks and mobility in Cumbria, England. Over a one-year period, interviews were conducted with care training specialists, carers, clients, and employers across England, including…

The apparent simplicity of ethnographic methods--studying people in their normal life setting, going beyond what might be said in surveys and interviews to observe everyday practices--is deceptive. Anthropological knowledge is gained through fieldwork and through pursuing a reflexive flexible approach. This study carried out in a non-government…

Arrival stories are said to be typical components of anthropologically informed ethnographies in which the ethnographer as "stranger" comes face to face with research subjects as "others", establishes a context for the research and perhaps uses the story to justify the validity of his or her observations. The notion of a conventional ethnographic…

Although ubiquitous members of schools, few scholars and/or practitioners recognize how custodians'/caretakers' associations with students reciprocally contribute to student welfare and custodian status. This ethnographic study documents custodians' lived experiences while interacting with young children in three socioeconomically different…

This article reviews a range of difficult issues that currently face ethnographic research, and offers some reflections on them. These issues include: how ethnographers define the spatial and temporal boundaries of what they study; how they determine the context that is appropriate for understanding it; in what senses ethnography can be--or…

This paper explores the challenges and dilemmas of conducting ethnographic race research in the context of the South African situation, forming part of my ethnographic race research PhD project, conducted in two historically white, single-sex schools in South Africa. First, it critically examines the theoretical dilemmas on crucial issues of…