Course detail

Welcome to Educational ethnographies and histories and political and professional problems

Description:

Documenting educational problems and pointing out solutions by means of research data has been an increasing tendency in educational policy. Within the field of education research, both ethnographic and historical studies are a way to meet such politically defined expectations, while also aiming at challenging assumptions that political and public expectations rely on.

The course targets the challenge and question of how to establish open empirical educational studies through fieldwork, ethnographically inspired historical methods and archival work on contemporary educational issues and problem. How do we as education scientists establish empirical material by means of ethnographic and historical approaches? Which answers can such approaches (whether connected to each other or not) offer contemporary educational professional and political challenges within and beyond the formal education system? And how do we analyze the empirical material by means of theoretical lenses without drowning out the actors and the practices we study and who’s histories we aim to put in the fore?

At this two-day course we will establish a common laboratory for PhD-scholars and senior scholars doing ethnographic and historical research that deals with and goes behind and beyond educational issues, challenges and problems. We will share our laboratory work and challenges with each other.

 The learning objectives are:

• to develop the competence of the participants to establish dialogues between field work based empirical material and oral and written sources - and theoretical tools.
• To extend the knowledge of the participant concerning the potential and sensitivities of ethnographic and historical approaches when used to explore educational professional and politically defined problems.

 Teaching methods:

Lectures, plenary discussions, data-based workshops including response to the work of the participants

The course provide and put into dialogue:

• insights from the laboratories of four senior scholars speaking from respectively a transnational ethnography of education perspective (Li); a history of experience-perspective (Buchardt), an ethnography and history of emotions perspective (Vertelyte) and a perspective of anthropology of learning (Saltofte).
• discussion of and response to problems and data from the participants own laboratories.

Organizer: Associate Professor Jin Hui Li & Professor Mette Buchardt, Centre for Education Policy Research (CfU), Department of Culture & Learning

Program outline:

Day I:

• 9.00-9:15:       Meet and greet (Arrival and coffee)
• 9.15-9.45:       Mette Buchardt: Defining the challenges: Educational ethnographies and histories and political and professional problems.
• 9.45-10.45      Jin Hui Li/case from the lab, questions and discussion
• 10.45-11.15    Coffee and mingle
• 11.15-12.15    Comments on papers and feedback divided in tracks: (Each paper: 5 min. presentation; 5 min. feedback from a peer-PhD scholar; 5 min feedback from a senior scholar followed by open discussion and sum up).
• 12.15 -13:15   Lunch and mingle
• 13.15 -14:15   Margit Saltofte/case from the lab questions and discussion.
• 14.15-14.30    Coffee and transfer to tracks
• 14.30 -15:30   Comments on papers and feedback in tracks
• 15.30 -16:00: Recap of the day: “Two things I take with me from today”.

 Day II:

• 9.00-9.30        Jin Hui Li: Summing up from day I and main angles on the methodological problems of the day.
• 9.30-10.30      Mante Vertelyte/case from the lab, questions and discussion.
• 10.30 -10.50   Coffee and transfer to tracks.
• 10.50 -11.50   Comments on papers and feedback in tracks.
• 11.50 -12:50   Lunch and mingle
• 12:50 -13:50   Mette Buchardt/case from the lab questions and discussion.
• 13.50 -14.05   Coffee and transfer to tracks.
• 14.05 -15:35   Comments on papers and feedback in tracks
• 15.35 -16:00   Recap: “Two things I take with me from the course”.

Description of paper requirements:

2 pages project description, 1 page description of a methodological challenge, 1-2 page of excerpt from empirical material (field work notes, interview, memory work, document, source et al.) 

Lecturers: 

• Jin Hui Li, Centre for Education Policy Research (CfU), AAU
• Mette Buchardt, Centre for Education Policy Research (CfU), AAU
• Assoc. prof. Mante Vertelyte, Centre for Education Policy Research (CfU), AAU
• Assoc. prof. Margit Saltofte, Centre for Education Policy Research (CfU), AAU

ECTS:  3

Date: 29,30 October 2026 (9.00-16:00)

Place: Aalborg University

City: Aalborg

Number of seats: 30

Deadline: 29 September 2026

Key literature:

-        Holland D., Lachicotte W. Jr., Skinner D., & Cain C. (1998). Figured Worlds, I Identity and agency in cultural Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Kapitel 3, ss. 49-66

-        Urrieta, L. Figured Worlds and Education: An Introduction to the Special Issue. Urban Rev 39, 107–116 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-007-0051-0

-        Beverly Skeggs: Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable, Sage 1997 (excerpts).

-        Phillip Jackson: Life in Classrooms, Rinehart and Winston 1968 (excerpts)

-        Maria Tamboukou ‘History and Ethnography: interfaces and juxtapositions.’ Handbook of Qualitative Research in Education, Northampton (MA) & Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar, 2012, 136-152.

-        Reddy, W. M. (2001). The navigation of feeling: A framework for the history of emotions. Cambridge University Press.

-        Ann Laura Stoler Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Princeton University Press 2009.

-        Li, J. H. (2022). How am I supposed to feel? Female students’ emotional reasoning about academic becoming in transnational higher education. Gender and Education, 34(5), 561-576. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2022.2057929

-        Jin Hui Li & Mette Buchardt (2023). “Feeling strange” ‒ oral histories of newly arrived migrant children’s experiences of schooling in Denmark from the 1970s. Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 59(6), 1054-1072. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2022.2065641

-        Margit Saltofte (2025). Shaping a creative choir by learning to listen? Ethnography and Education, 20(2), 151-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2024.2440441

-        Manté Vertelyté (2023): ‘Have we lost our sense of humour?!’ Affective senses of racial joking in Danish schools, Social Identities, DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2023.2208067

-        Mette Buchardt (2025) “Educating immigrants – Educating about immigrants. Suburban social housing as a knowledge hub for Danish welfare-state integration politics 1970s–1980s,” Nordic Journal of Educational History.

-        Karen E. Andreasen et al (2017) At undersøge læring. Samfundslitteratur 

-        Heikki Kokko & Minna Harjula: Social History of Experiences: A Theoretical-Methodological Approach”. P. Haapala, M. Harjula, H. Kokko (eds.) Experiencing Society and the Lived Welfare State, Palgrave Macmillan 2023

Important information concerning PhD courses:

There is a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start of the course.

 We cannot ensure any seats before the deadline for enrolment, all participants will be informed after the deadline, approximately 3 weeks before the start of the course.

For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration at phdcourses@adm.aau.dk. When contacting us please state the course title and course period. Thank you.