Autoethnography is a form of qualitative inquiry intended to connect the lived experience of a researcher to the larger social and cultural world (Ellis, 2004) and it can be a valuable methodological tool for adult educators and learners. This paper explores the use and value of autoethnography as a qualitative methodology and explores the…

For over 25 years, my lecture driven teaching strategies that included passive learning outcomes has prevailed in my K12 and higher education teaching. The requirement to help doctoral students identify and understand their epistemology, ontology and worldview within a research methods class created a dilemma regarding the appropriateness of…

This paper introduces institutional ethnography (IE) as a useful and systematic process for examining organizations and work data through the lens of stakeholders, at different levels, and considering the different forces at play. Drawing from ethnomethodology, IE focuses on how everyday experience is socially organized. Ideological shifts have…

In this paper we share the outcomes of a project that sought to take up Nutbrown's challenge to "push out from the safe(er) boundaries of established methodologies" in early years research. We explore the value of auto-ethnographic storytelling, Lyotard's "petit récit", to the processes of doing and learning about research in…

Literacy studies approaches have tended to adopt a position which enables ethnographic explorations of a wide range of "literacies". An important issue arising is the new challenge required for researchers to capture, manage, and analyse data that highlight the unique character of practices around texts in digital environments. Such…

This article brackets assumptions embedded in the framing of this special issue on "problematizing methodological simplicity in qualitative research" in a effort to understand why policymakers put pressure on all types of researchers, including those who use qualitative methods, to provide relatively simple, even somewhat mechanistic portrayals of…

This paper analyses the conceptual significance of different methods of researching learning. Based largely upon our own experiences, we briefly compare the use of mini-ethnography, life history, cross-sectional surveys and existing panel survey data. We argue that there are strong affinities between each of these methods and significantly…

This ethnographic study answers calls for research into the ways that virtual organizations (or innovation-driven collaborative teams) form and develop, what supports and constraints their development, and the leadership models that support the organizations' work. The study examines how a virtual organization emerged from an intersegmental…

In this article I draw on an ethnographic case study that examined mas' makers' perceptions of the learning/teaching practices at work in the production of costumes for Trinidad and Tobago's annual Carnival celebrations. During the 2005 Carnival season I spent four months in the field, my country of birth, and collected data through participant…

This paper dives into the messy work of writing (our) sexualities into our qualitative research. We suggest that even though queering research methods opens up new ways of conducting research and sharing a queer identity with research participants there are some limitations to both notions. One such limitation is that queer identities and…

This article outlines some theoretical and methodological parameters of a critical practice approach to policy. The article discusses the origins of this approach, how it can be uniquely adapted to educational analysis, and why it matters--not only for scholarly interpretation but also for the democratization of policy processes as well. Key to…

After being told in an end-of-year job review that performances are not considered valuable research outcomes, the author argues in this essay that performance matters. This essay makes a case for recognizing performance ethnographies as research, pedagogy, and active service and concludes with guidelines for performance ethnographers who are…

The topic of informal learning and work has quickly become a staple in contemporary work and adult learning research internationally. The narrow conceptualization of work is briefly challenged before the article turns to a review of the historical origins as well as contemporary theories and methods involved in researching informal learning and…

This article describes the application of a university-community partnership model to the problem of adapting evidence-based treatment approaches in a community mental health setting. Background on partnership research is presented, with consideration of methodological and practical issues related to this kind of research. Then, a rationale for…

This paper provides an account of the methodological approach of a study designed to address some fundamental questions relating to formative assessment. The paper reports on the use of a critically quasi-ethnographic approach and describes the practicalities of adopting such an approach. The validity of the study is also considered, reflecting on…