This paper explores ethnographic fieldwork as moral laboratories. Drawing upon two episodes in my field encounters in Southwest China, I illustrate the nature of our method as a form of moral striving and experimentation. Fieldwork is a stage where practical actions become vulnerable ethical dramas in search for the situated good. Fieldwork…

By its very nature ethnography is an emergent methodology. To be ethical the ethnographer needs to manage research ethics in-situ. This need to manage ethical dilemmas as they arise often comes into conflict with increased ethical regulation and procedures from ethics review boards that require the researcher to foresee ethical quandaries before…

In England, the development of teachers' curriculum design capabilities has been identified as a 'challenge remaining' (Department for Education [DfE]. (2022). "Opportunity for all: Strong schools with great teachers for your child."…

Childhood research is increasingly being conducted from different disciplines, and research methods for showing the child's world are also increasing and evolving. This article examines the challenges and opportunities of childhood research in an early childhood education and care (ECEC) environment from an ethnographic approach. The purpose of…

Based on three vignettes taken from interviews with friends who were members of a social-ecological transition initiative of which I was both an active participant and a researcher, this paper explores ethnography in friendship. Breaking with the methodological proposals known as friendship as method, this text proposes to reflect on the ways…

This article explores the ethical dilemmas encountered by two ethnographers in adult education research in a context where neoliberalism impacts on education settings, policies, and social justice. Everyday ethical dilemmas arise in thorny situations in which the general ethical principles ethnographers are regulated by cannot help them react or…

Though community-based participatory research (CBPR) boasts a robust history, challenges to conducting such work ethically and equitably remain. Common difficulties, such as addressing power dynamics and navigating mutuality, are heightened when doing participatory research with young people, specifically youth participatory action research…

As essential as positionality is to qualitative research involving engagement with research participants, contemporary scholarly discussion of positionality is mainly aimed at educating emerging researchers about acknowledging their own subjectivities. In turn, there is little consensus regarding how authors should address positionality in writing…

This article analyzes critical reflection groups held over the course of a year-long collaborative ethnography between me as researcher and five novice bilingual teachers. Drawing on feminist theories of emotion as knowledge, I argue that coalitional critical consciousness developed in our meetings through emotional expression and acknowledgment…

This paper discusses advantages and disadvantages of being a researcher in a familiar setting. This study was conducted in a nursery in Turkey. In ethnographic research, conducting research in a familiar setting plays an important role in collecting and analysing data. Familiarisation with participants and settings is associated with 'insiderness'…

Using an autoethnographic approach, this article focuses on the experiences of two male dance educators/researchers living with/through terminal cancer. Autoethnographers analyze their 'unique life experiences in the context of the social and cultural institutions that have shaped the world the researcher inhabits.' Drawn from a larger research…

This inquiry into the nature of feminist solidarity in the academic sciences is guided by the intra-activity of gendered bodies in teaching-intensive faculty positions. It uses diffractive methodology to examine how response-able research practice can account for enactment of social discourse through agential cuts. Over the course of a two-year…

This autoethnography explored my experiences in designing a nature-based literacy unit in Hawai'i. Whereas a small body of research highlights a positive relationship between nature-based experiences and literacy outcomes, there is minimal research on the planning process. I wanted to understand the experience of planning for nature-based literacy…

In this "Reflections from the Field," we describe and interrogate our ongoing engagements with designing, conducting, and documenting multimodal field research as early-career ethnographic education researchers. Our Multimodal Scholarship Working Group engages with content across media and multimodal methods to promote collaboration and…

In this paper, we set out a collaborative autoethnographic account of our reflective journey to deeper understandings of open, distance and e-learning (ODeL) through enrolling, participating and completing the first module in a course on technology-enhanced learning (TEL). As authors, we both enrolled for the course for different reasons. The…