A Discussion On The Critical Ethnography Methodology In The Comparative Education Research

Since 1970s and 1980s, critical ethnography methodology has been extensively studied and applied in many other fields. But it failed to attract the attentions of comparative education, which has just experienced the time consuming debate about its methodology, and is being strongly affected by the trends of social thoughts, such as Multiculturalism and Postmodernism. However, according to my exploration involves the methodology character of critical ethnography, the experiences on the application of critical ethnography methodology in education studies and the requirements of comparative education to adapt to the new trends of social thoughts and open up space of survive and development, I have found that there are a few conjunctions between the both. So, I will set up my paper mainly according these three aspects. At the same time, I hope critical ethnography methodology could become one choice of comparative educators, thus it may have the chance to contribute to comparative education.The main structure of this paper is below:Introduction: in this part I will simply introduces the topic of this paper, the research meaning, realistic conditions and the research methods.Part one: in this part I will discuss the meaning and the methodology character of critical ethnography. Firstly, I introduce the meaning and the history of development of ethnography. Then, I interpret the meaning of the"critical"so that I can demonstrate the source, the basic element and the unique characteristic of critical ethnography. Finally, I summarize the methodology character of critical ethnography.Part two: the applications of the critical ethnography in educational research. Educational research has kept along with the step of the development of ethnography closely. So, at present, there are a few mature educational research cases which have been completed applied critical ethnography. Therefore, the most important point in this part is the methods and research program of critical ethnography: based on the illumination of the educational research case.Part three: the application of critical ethnography in the comparative education research. If part two is to confirm that critical ethnography has the same viability in comparative education research, then in this part, I would emphasize a few conjunctions between comparative education and critical ethnography in order to prove that there is a necessity to apply critical ethnography in the comparative education research.Part four: the application of critical ethnography in"area studies"on education."area studies"is the base of comparative education. So, I attempt to further my examination about the viability and the necessity, especially how critical ethnography satisfies comparative education's needs theoretically through this aspect.Epilogue: critical ethnography: a methodology choice of comparative education research.