Educational Ethnography: Concepts And History

As an application of ethnography to the educational research, educational ethnography has the basic characters and research rules of ethnography as well as the subject features of educational research. As a result, on the one hand, there are many similarities between ethnography and educational ethnography. Firstly, their research context is natural. Secondly, their research angle is holistic. Thirdly, their research result is narrative. On the other hand, educational ethnography possesses its own characters. Firstly, its research object is relatively familiar to the researcher. Secondly, its research time is relatively flexible. If the judging standards aren't restricted within the narrow limits of those of quantitative research method, the advantages and disadvantages of educational ethnography will be more distinct.After ethnography achieved its hegemony of research method in the west anthropology at the turning of the 20th century, several anthropologists and socialists tried to apply it to education research in the 30-50s of the 20th century. Therefore educational ethnography began to bud. Along with the flourish of the qualitative research method in educational research and the birth of educational anthropology, educational ethnography came into being and was applied extensively into normal education in the 60-70s of the 20th century. The discussion and reflection on educational ethnography in the 80s of the 20th century deepened its research area and resulted in the birth of the schooling ethnography.During its history of several decades, educational ethnography was affected by many schools and evolved into three categories which have different standpoints and strategies, namely traditional ethnography in education, educational ethnography of communication and critical ethnography in education. We can find out five clues about the development of educational ethnography from its history. The first is about its theory base which was from functionalism-oriented to hermeneutics-oriented. The second is about its research aim which was from aiming at anthropology to aiming at pedagogy. The third is about research object which was from "the others" education to native education. The forth is about researchers which were from anthropologists to educational anthropologists and to teaching staff of practice. The fifth is about the three levels of research method which were from strategies to the whole research method.According to the application of educational ethnography and Chinese educational researchers' understanding about this research method, educational ethnography is necessary to be introduced to China. The paper tries to give some suggestions about how to introduce educational ethnography from some aspects.