Ethnography in education and policy research offers a particular set of methods to describe and analyse education and other policies and settings from the inside. This approach has proved successful in theory-sing policy processes as well as demonstrating the impact of educational reforms on teachers and students. It involves participant observation, interviewing and immersion in the field for extended periods.
In ethnographic approaches to researching education policy, the researcher is the prime research instrument for the gathering of data. It necessitates access to the sites where policies are produced and/or enacted, which might involve different entry problems. It requires the researcher to invest a considerable amount of time in fieldwork and thus makes it a particularly suitable strategy to Ph.D. projects and researchers, who typically have more time available for the research than more tenured researchers. However, different time modes can be identified that allow for constituting different ethnographic practices.
The course aims at providing tools for planning, doing, and reflecting on ethnographic field work in education and policy contexts. It is targeting Ph.D. students whose project involve the use of ethnographic methods, also within other fields than education, or/and students that have interests in education and policy issues.
- Teacher: Martin Bak Jørgensen
- Teacher: Annette Rasmussen