Reclaiming Ethnography: Reasserting the Importance of the Ethnographic Imagination for Teacher Education Research

• In Event: Researching and Innovating in Teacher Preparation Programs

Abstract

This paper advocates the relevance of ethnography as a methodology for researching preservice teacher education. At a time when other modes of research are receiving higher priority in educational research, ethnography offers a means of capturing the lived experience of learning to teach from the perspective of those entering the profession. Drawing on a long tradition of ethnographic educational research (e.g. Willis, 1977; Ball, 1981; Britzman, 2003), the research underpinning this paper demonstrates the importance and relevance of the ethnographic imagination for examining preservice teacher education, enabling the construction of ‘particular versions of truth’ (Britzman, 1995:237) that interrogate the conflicts and crises of learning to teach.

Author

• Sarah Steadman, King's College London