This paper describes the use of the ethnographer's perspective in applying research knowledge to the improvement of educational practice. The Documentation and Technical Assistance Project (DTA) uses ethnographic methods to study problem solving in urban public schools. In the complicated culture of the urban school, social, economic and political forces, as well as educational considerations have an impact upon the course of school improvement. The field researcher finds difficulty communicating the contextual richness of this data when the technical assister is interested in a different type of data. The New York region of DTA has undertaken the task of facilitating a direct linkage between the holistic ethnographic perspective of the field researcher and the technical assister who delivers services based on these data. Preparation and synthesis seminars are used for effecting this linkage. In the preparation seminar, data are organized into thematic units. The emphasis is on preparing the data in such a way as to be useful to DTA technical assisters while preserving a critical consciousness of the context. In the synthesis seminars, researchers and technical assisters discuss their problems and consider alternative solutions and/or the application of relevant data for solving them. (Author/GC)