To analyze the counternarrative in the public discourse surrounding Teach For America (TFA), this paper represents the first digital ethnography in education policy. We conduct a qualitative analysis of Truth For America, an education policy podcast. We found four overarching themes that arose from conversations with respondents: (1) problematic…

Background: Case study is widely used in teaching and learning literature; however, the extant literature contains few examples of student-developed case studies. This study used the situated perspective of experiential education (EE) to highlight context and legitimate peripheral participation encouraging enculturation into research communities…

We join scholars who criticize the Western separation of humans and the more-than-human (MtH) and believe that an emphasis on the MtH within students' local community is supported by repeated exposure. We take an ethnographic approach to study a collaborative program between a university, a local nonprofit, and a US public elementary school that…

This paper analyses reflections upon the nature of recent educational policymaking in Singapore. Drawing upon the authors' individual and collective autoethnographic analyses of a series of reflective notes jotted down after discussions with educators from private and public schools in Singapore, the Academy of Singapore Teachers, and FutureSkills…

This reflection article reports on an eight-month critical ethnographic study in Bogotá, Colombia. I visited the classrooms of three English teachers and their secondary students from a diverse and marginalized community in the southwest part of the city. Data collected in the form of student focus groups and teacher interviews revealed how…

This paper is a methodological ethnography aiming to highlight the difficulties in using conventional methods in connection with an explorative philosophy: Deleuze and Guattari's. Taking an empirical point of departure in conversations about the future with students in upper secondary school, the struggle to find a scientifically valid label…

This article addresses mapmaking as a multimodal method and lens for place-based ethnographic inquiry. I describe three contexts drawn from my research on and teaching of mapmaking. Drawing from my own sense-making of mapping as an embodied phenomenon, I discuss how the fields of sensory and materialist studies might expand the interpretive…

This article explores the concept of "curious play" as a theoretical framework to understand and communicate children's experiences of free play in nature. The concept emerged interactively from three sources of inspiration: an ethnographically inspired study of children playing in nature; as a critique of the concept of "risky…

Within the context of sexuality education as an HIV prevention strategy, much attention has been given to "what" content should be taught and the effectiveness of that content in achieving desired goals. While some research has problematised how curricular content is understood or taken-up, what remains largely unquestioned is a…

Autoethnography is a form of qualitative inquiry intended to connect the lived experience of a researcher to the larger social and cultural world (Ellis, 2004) and it can be a valuable methodological tool for adult educators and learners. This paper explores the use and value of autoethnography as a qualitative methodology and explores the…

Based upon ethnographic research, this article explores undergraduate students' experiences at a normal university in Shanghai focusing on the types of identities and forms of sociality emerging therein. Although students' symptoms of disappointment seem to indicate the power of university experiences to extinguish purposeful action, this article…

We consider discursive shadowing as methodology in linguistic ethnography and how it refines our analyses of participants' situated practices. In addition to the constant and extended company the researcher and key participant keep with one another in the field, shadowing in a linguistic ethnographic approach includes the ubiquitous…

This article presents findings from a research project into multiliteracies pedagogy in Aotearoa New Zealand. In one phase of the multilayered project, participating teachers conducted an investigation of the in- and out-of-school literacy practices of one of their students using an ethnographic approach. In this article, the authors share themes…

This paper explores a key dilemma of the Chinese middle class as it appears in their apparent adherence to official language policy despite their lack of direct knowledge of that policy. Using fieldwork data from Hangzhou, I show that a group of middle-class parents worked together to build an "Ancient Way Academy" for their children to…

This paper looks at some issues around "learning to read" from the viewpoint of a social practice concept of literacy for both child and adult literacy. This calls for an ethnographic approach that, although increasingly common in the field of adult literacy, is less common in the policy and practice of schooling; there, a more…