Previous research presented in this journal and elsewhere has suggested that vocational education is highly gender segregated and it is the heavy industrial sectors such as industry, vehicle and construction programmes that mainly attract boys with an anti-school attitude who are not interested in academic school work. However, there are good reasons to also question the reproduction of these stereotypes and how they may operate in relation to youth in education. This article therefore discusses issues connected to carrying out research in settings with a majority of boys from working-class backgrounds. It focuses specifically on methodological questions and possibly hidden forms of methodological bias in ethnographic research as well as the formulation of research questions (turn of gaze) and how these may work in relation to the reproduction or rupture of standard gender stereotypes in education research. The article highlights interviewing individually or in groups, initial encounters and the turn of gaze in ethnography.