Ethnography has established itself as a key strategy of qualitative research in education, because it is so versatile, flexible, and ambiguous. Its growing importance coincides with an increasing diversity of »discovered« educational realities. In the process, many basic assumptions have turned into genuine tasks of research. Where are the places and times of learning, education, and social work to be found? Who are the actors and addressees? How are education and learning performed and enacted? The contributions to this volume discuss the multiple challenges that ethnographic research has to confront when exploring the multimodality, plurality, and translocality of educational realities.

A state-of-the-art reference on educational ethnography edited by leading journal editors This book brings an international group of writers together to offer an authoritative state-of-the-art review of, and critical reflection on, educational ethnography as it is being theorized and practiced today—from rural and remote settings to virtual and visual posts. It provides a definitive reference point and academic resource for those wishing to learn more about ethnographic research in education and the ways in which it might inform their research as well as their practice. Engaging in equal measure with the history of ethnography, its current state-of play as well as its prospects, The Wiley Handbook of Ethnography of Education covers a range of traditional and contemporary subjects—foundational aims and principles; what constitutes ‘good’ ethnographic practice; the role of theory; global and multi-sited ethnographic methods in education research; ethnography’s many forms (visual, virtual, auto-, and online); networked ethnography and internet resources; and virtual and place-based ethnographic fieldwork. Makes a return to fundamental principles of ethnographic inquiry, and describes and analyzes the many modalities of ethnography existing today Edited by highly-regarded authorities of the subject with contributions from well-known experts in ethnography Reviews both classic ideas in the ethnography of education, such as “grounded theory”, “triangulation”, and “thick description” along with new developments and challenges An ideal source for scholars in libraries as well as researchers out in the field The Wiley Handbook of Ethnography of Education is a definitive reference that is indispensable for anyone involved in educational ethnography and questions of methodology.

This book presents a collection of critical thinking that concern cultural, social and political issues for science education in the Nordic countries. The chapter authors describe specific scenarios to challenge persisting views, interrogate frameworks and trouble contemporary approaches to researching teaching and learning in science. Taking a point of departure in empirical examples from the Nordic countries the collection of work is taking a critical sideways glance at the Nordic education principles. Critical examinations target specifically those who are researching in the fields of science education research to question whether conventional research approaches, foci and theoretical approaches are sufficient in a world of science education that is neither politically neutral, nor free of cultural values. Attention is not only on the individual learner but on the cultural, social and political conditions and contexts in science education. The different chapters review debates and research in teacher education, school teaching and learning including when external stakeholders are involved. Even though the chapters are contextualized in Nordic settings there will be similarities and parallels that will be informative to the international science education research community.

This is the first international and interdisciplinary handbook to offer a comprehensive and an in-depth overview of findings from contemporary research, theory, and practice in early childhood language education in various parts of the world and with different populations. The contributions by leading scholars and practitioners are structured to give a survey of the topic, highlight its importance, and provide a critical stance. The book covers preschool ages, and looks at children belonging to diverse ethno-linguistic groups and experiencing different histories and pathways of their socio-linguistic and socio-cultural development and early education. The languages under the scope of this handbook are identified by the contributors as immigrant languages, indigenous, endangered, heritage, regional, minority, majority, and marginalized, as well as foreign and second languages, all of which are discussed in relation to early language education as the key concept of the handbook. In this volume, “early language education” will refer to any kind of setting, both formal and informal (e.g. nursery, kindergarten, early childhood education centers, complementary early schooling etc.) in which language learning within a context of children's sociolinguistic diversity takes place before elementary school.

This book offers both a theoretical and empirical examination of elite education, at all stages from the early years to university level. The book explores the various manifestations of internationalisation of education; the implications of these for national education systems; the formation and re-articulation of elite forms of education locally and globally; and how these facilitate the reproduction or disruption of processes of inequality. The collection critically considers these questions by drawing on contributions from around the world, and focuses on how internationalisation processes shape the various stages of the education system – from early years settings to higher education – in oftentimes quite different ways. At the same time, by engaging with the issues through a range of theoretical lenses, the book invites readers to consider in greater depth the various ways we can come to understand how processes of internationalisation are both embedding but also at times destabilising the formation and purpose of elite education provision and potentially the configuration of elite groups themselves. The book will be relevant to academics, researchers, students, policymakers and educators working in or on the field of ‘education’ across the world.

This book introduces multimodality and technology as key concepts for understanding learning in the 21st century. The author investigates how a nationwide socio-educational policy in Uruguay becomes recontextualised across time/space scales, impacting interaction and learning in an English as a Foreign Language classroom. The book introduces scalar analysis to better understand the situated and fractal nature of education policy as meaning-making, subsequently defining learning from a multimodal socio-semiotic approach. The analytical integration of different policy scales shows what policy means to various stakeholders, and what learning means for students and teachers. This depends both on how they position themselves and how they engage with the policy educational media. This innovative book will appeal to students and scholars of technology and learning, as well as multimodality.

Ethnographic research in higher education is gaining momentum. In the last 10 years, we saw a great increase in publications, and more and more researchers endorse ethnography because of its distinctive qualities and its productivity for research in higher education: Ethnography is commended for its unique approach to social practices through continuous and immediate experience in field work, and its unfragmented methodical attention to situations, interactions, and experiences. This unique approach is explored in the present book, which brings together researchers from Europe, America, and Australia, and includes current ethnographic studies on higher education, reflections on teaching ethnography, and innovative approaches in ethnographic methods.

Analysing Education Policy: Theory and Method provides a comprehensive overview of key approaches in critical education policy research. With chapters from internationally recognised and established scholars in the field, this book provides an authoritative account of how different questions may be approached and answered. Part 1 features chapters focused on text-based approaches to analysis, including critical discourse analysis, thinking with Foucault, Indigenist Policy Analysis, media analysis, the analysis of promotional texts in education, and the analysis of online networks. Part 2 features chapters focused on network ethnography, actor-network theory, materiality in policy, Institutional Ethnography, decolonising approaches to curriculum policy, working with children and young people, and working with education policy elites. These chapters are supported by an introduction to each section, as well as an overall introduction and conclusion chapter from the editors, drawing together key themes and ongoing considerations for the field. Critical education policy analysis takes many different forms, each of which works with distinctly different questions and fulfils different purposes. This book is the first to clearly map current common and influential approaches to answering these questions, providing important guidance for both new and established researchers.

Children and parents have become a focus of debates on ‘new social risks’ in European welfare states. Policymaking elites have converged in defining such risks, and they have outlined new forms of parenting support to better safeguard children and activate their potential. Increasingly, parents are suspected of falling short of public expectations. Contributors to this special issue scrutinize this shift towards parenting as performance and analyse recent forms of parenting support.

It is a commonplace in educational policy and theory to claim that digital technology has 'transformed' the university, the nature of learning and even the essence of what it means to be a scholar or a student. However, these claims have not always been based on strong research evidence. What are students and scholars actually doing in the day-to-day life of the digital university? This book examines in detail how the world of the digital interacts with texts, artefacts, devices and humans, in the contemporary university setting. Weaving together perspectives from a range of thinkers and disciplinary sources, Lesley Gourlay draws on ideas from posthuman and new materialist theory in particular, to open up our understanding about how digital knowledge practices operate. She proposes that digital engagement in the university should not be regarded as 'virtual' or disembodied, but instead may be understood as a complex set of entanglements of the body, texts and material artefacts, making a case that agency and the ways in which knowledge emerges should be regarded as 'more than human'.