This paper identifies two broad types of "critical" ethnographic research. One type attempts to empower social actors by providing emic-oriented accounts which tend to emphasize the integrity of their constructs, thus laying the groundwork for a redistribution of social power. The other type attempts to combine analysis of phenomenal, micro-level experience with macro-level structural influences on schooling. The paper shows how these trends are relevant to research in educational administration through combining a structural approach which stresses the allocative function of schools and Willis' (1977) framework for understanding practitioner ideology through an analysis of the official, pragmatic, and cultural levels of institutional life. (A 33-item reference list concludes the document.) (Author)