In this article, we reflect on our experiences with teaching ethnographic skills and sensibilities to MSc students at a Dutch university. Using methods such as (self)observation, journaling and reflection, we highlight dilemmas (conceptual, practical, ethical) faced by students when doing ethnographic fieldwork and dilemmas that emerged in…

The notion of the ethnographer as participant observer, as an active agent rather than passive observer, is well established within conversations about method and methodology. Less well explored is the extent to which the inherent curiosity and inquisitiveness of the ethnographer might be reciprocated: how might this be established and how might…

The main objective of this research is to present and analyse the collaboration process established between the ethnographers and a school that faces the challenge of promoting change towards a more inclusive and social justice model. The methods used to carry out this four-year process were, in essence, participatory observation in multiple…

This paper critically analyses and aims to denaturalise models of identity that circulate in discourse about vocational education in the Netherlands. It is argued that discourse about the vocational track is characterised by a pervasive focus on deficits, framing vocational education as unprestigious, and its students as unintelligent and…

This study was developed to show a professor's perspective to comprehend his difficulties and challenges, within a different scenario and culture of teaching geriatric dentistry in a nursing home. It was a self-analysis theoretically supported by the Social Constructionism and the Interpretative Autoethnography perspective. Data were constructed…

This paper discusses the main aspects of an ethnographic approach to the Occupy Poble Sec Cinema Forum in Barcelona, Spain, and the difficulties of using participant observation, in which vision is still dominant, in this setting. The methodological challenge stemmed from the 'native' position of the researcher--a member of the Forum's organising…

This article is a part of an on going ethnography project that run over six years in an Upper Secondary School in the south of Sweden. In this particular article we shed light over the implementation, enactment and reactions from the staff of one of the latest of a series of reforms that has been launched into the Swedish educational system: The…

The ethnographer's embodied action during research is a complex of habit, belief, social and institutional positioning, and intention. This article examines what urban anthropologist Wacqaunt calls 'carnal sociology' and considers its implications for ethnographers of religious educational spaces. Contemporary ethnographers of education have…

Digital technologies open new windows for ethnographic explorations of cultural experiences. In this paper, we examine text messaging among academically talented teenage girls of colour at three US urban high schools. Texting introduced a new communication modality into the girls' lives and created a space for new discourses mediating their…

This paper is about people's relationship to laws, rules and regulations in a Greek town. The aim is to describe specific traffic policies, point out the underlying pedagogical assumptions and assess their potential effect in relation to the goals of a democratic education. The study springs from the author's experience as a non-native inhabitant…

The paper approaches school parades on national commemorations in Greece as a 'text' for storing and transmitting cultural meanings and value hierarchies. The study is based on policy documents and participant observation. The detailed Ministry instructions on how schools should select students for the parade may be viewed as instructions on how…

The aim of this article is to study how young people view themselves as learners within educational trajectories, as an alternative approach to today's emphasis on performance and standardisation. We study different learner positionings in transitions from one level of schooling to another, using the analytic concepts of "positional…

This article explores young mothers' experiences of turbulent pathways in and out of education and work in Northern England. Data are drawn from an ethnography conducted between 2010 and 2013 that incorporated participant observation, life-story maps, photographs and interviews carried out in young mothers' homes, parenting classes and…