The Strange Case of the Disappearing Teachers: Critical Ethnography and the Importance of Studying In-between

Abstract

Critical ethnography first emerged as a distinctive research approach in education studies in the late 1960s (Anderson, 1989, p. 250). It has now achieved a degree of respectability and has taken its place as part of the qualitative tradition in universities (Jordan & Yeomans, 1995, p. 399). Critical ethnography reflects what Geertz (1983) identified as a ‘blurring of genres’. As the name suggests, it is marked by a confluence of interpretivist field studies and critical streams of thought (Goodman, 1998, p. 51). These converging streams, arising from a variety of sources and pushed along by the currents of Marxist, neo-Marxist and feminist social theory, swirl together into a dynamically enriched mixture of the methods and theories of anthropology, sociology and education. Not surprisingly the streams formed in different parts of the globe, while composed of all of the elements just named, are configured slightly differently. As Priyadharshini (2003, p. 421) recently noted in comparing British and American strands of educational ethnography, the Western side of the Atlantic is marked by a much stronger tradition of educational anthropology than in the UK. And these differences make a difference.

Citation

Forsey, M. (2007), "The Strange Case of the Disappearing Teachers: Critical Ethnography and the Importance of Studying In-between", Walford, G. (Ed.) Methodological Developments in Ethnography (Studies in Educational Ethnography, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 69-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1529-210X(06)12005-7