Meta-ethnographic Synthesis in Education : Challenges, Aims and Possibilities

Calls for “deparochialization of educational research” (Lingard 2006) have directed educational ethnography from the conventional research designs and from the study of single sites and local situations to the study of “the circulation of cultural meanings, objects and identities in diffuse time-spaces” (Marcus 1995: 96). In response to this call and following the already established tradition of use of meta-ethnography in health studies this volume explores the potentials of this method (Noblit & Hare, 1988) to unpick the interconnectedness of different educational sites which have been and are being studied ethnographically. Besides, metaethnographic analyses may also offer a credible response to the lessening of opportunities for original educational ethnographic research at times of limited resources.

The volume examines the forms of translocal and transtemporal ethnographic synthesis currently in use by educational ethnographers as well as the challenges and the possibilities that the method offers. It also addresses and attempts to respond to the question if meta-ethnography might be a means to sharpen ethnographers’ sensitivity for each other’s work and achievements in the past.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnography and Education.

Michalis Kakos is a Reader at the School of Education, Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is a member of the University’s Centre for Research and Innovation in Childhood, Education and Society and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany. His research interests and current research are in the fields of educational ethnography, citizenship education, and the educational inclusion of refugee and migrant students.

Bettina Fritzsche is a Professor for General Education with an emphasis on qualitative methods at the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany. In her last research project, she undertook a comparative ethnography of teacher-student relationships in an English and a German primary school (funded by the German Research Foundation). Her research interests lie in cultural-comparative educational research, reconstructive research on education, ethnography, and videography of pedagogical practices and diversity in schools.