Educational Ethnography Past, Present, and Future: Ideas to Think With

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts, methods, and debates from Eisenhart’s Educational Ethnography article.

Ethnography

A qualitative research method involving extended fieldwork, participant observation, interviews, and immersion in the lives of participants to understand their cultures and practices.

Culture

A fundamental social science concept with shifting meanings across contexts; in postmodern times it is viewed as dynamic, produced through social interaction rather than a fixed essence.

Muddles

Three confusing problems Eisenhart identifies in ethnography: the meaning of culture, enthusiasm for ethnography, and the researcher’s responsibilities.

Partial boundedness

The idea that cultures are not strictly bounded; boundaries are permeable and cultural forms move across groups.

Fordism

An industrial regime characterized by factory-based mass production, specialization, standardization, and accountability.

Post-Fordism

An economic regime emphasizing flexibility, information-based work, mobility, and consumer orientation.

Postmodernism

A set of ideas challenging fixed truths and highlighting contingency, multiple perspectives, and the instability of meaning.

Cultural productions

Willis’ concept referring to discourses, meanings, materials, practices, and group processes used to explore and occupy positions within wider social possibilities.

Funds of knowledge

The knowledge and cultural resources available in families and communities that students bring to schooling.

Tangled Up in School

Nespor’s view of a school as an intersection of multiple networks (family, peers, media) rather than a standalone, bounded entity.

Multi-sited ethnography

Marcus’s approach that follows chains, paths, and connections across locations to study broader social processes.

Context (Nespor)

The idea that context is a networked ecosystem of influences—local to global—shaping institutions like schools.

Public symbols

Collective representations used in public discourse and institutions (e.g., hearings, law) that circulate meanings and affect real-world outcomes.

Bus tickets for identities

Metaphor from Nespor (and discussed by others) describing how popular culture assigns identities that people carry across networks.

Collective representations

Public symbols and shared meanings used in legal and political processes to shape discourse and policy.

Pastiche

Marcus’s idea of blending diverse cultural references across contexts; cultural forms that are not rooted in a single traditional community.

Textualist strategies

Writing approaches in ethnography designed to represent multiple voices, including the researcher’s, through varied textual forms.

Ethnographers’ responsibilities

Ethnographers’ obligation to balance protecting participants with potential social action or change, often involving collaboration and negotiation.

Procedural justice

Fair, legitimate processes for negotiating and implementing interventions when multiple perspectives compete.

Microethnography

A methodological refinement that combines traditional ethnography with micro-level analysis using video/audio and detailed talk-in-interaction.