Negotiated Ethnography: The Possibilities for Practice

Abstract

It is difficult to improve pedagogical and leadership practices in schools, particularly in settings where there are high levels of poverty and difference. This chapter describes a type of ethnography developed in such contexts that is designed to serve both a research purpose, and to be useful to participants by providing feedback on their collective practice and its effects. This type of research involves the participants in the identification and collection of useful data, as well as its analysis. The iterative and ongoing nature of the field work is illustrated and discussed in terms of its particular suitability to challenging contexts. Central to the paper is an analysis of the possibility of this negotiated ethnographic endeavour, which takes the form of sustained critical conversations, to influence that which it sets out to describe - practice.