Ethnographic Methods in Educational Policy Research

From an anthropological perspective, educational policy is a complex social practice shaped by the politics, ideologies, intentions, and meaning-making practices of participants. Ethnographers consider how and why policy problems and solutions are developed, negotiated, and appropriated. From this perspective, ethnographic methods provide the ideal tools for studying policy making, from federal to state, to district, to school, to classroom levels. However, the advent of multi-sited and multimodal approaches in recent years has radically challenged existing understandings of ethnographic research. How have contemporary ethnographers of educational policy responded, methodologically and empirically? This chapter addresses that question. Drawing on a systematic literature review of work produced in the field of educational policy studies since 2015, the authors provide an overview of ethnographic methodological developments and debates, identify key trends in existing research, and outline new areas for investigation.

Keywords: ethnographic methods; case study; comparative case study; multi-sited ethnography; network ethnography; digital ethnography; policy as practice; inequality and education policy; accountability; teacher evaluation; marketization; privatization; citizenship; governmentality; policy assemblages; policy mobilities