The aim of this article is to discuss and demonstrate how ethnographic-oriented research might contribute to broadening the research interest in extended education. Extended education might be seen as a societal investment in education. This perspective calls for different kinds of school effectiveness research that generates useful and relevant knowledge about how and to what degree extended schooling effects academic achievements seen from a general societal perspective. Extended education might, however, also be seen as a new school strategy -- as a new way of organizing pupils, teachers and parents everyday-life. Ethnographic-oriented educational research seeks to examine how an implementation of extended education in a local area impacts actors' everyday-life and generates new discourses and struggles over values and concepts in education. This is illustrated through an analysis of the dynamics created by the implementation of all-day schooling in a specific residential area in Denmark.