Guest Editorial: Ethnographies of Education for Social Justice

Abstract

The different articles in this special issue of Ethnography and Education approach several inter-related questions. What is the nature of ethnography of education for Social Justice? In what ways can a deeper understanding of ethnography inform and guide the actions of researchers for social justice in education settings? How best can ethnographic research be developed in education for Social Justice? And finally, to what extent can ethnography of education for social justice be preserved? As researchers and specifically as ethnographers of education, we think it is essential that we consistently ask the question: ‘for what purpose should we do research in education?’ Perhaps an equally important question is: ‘in whose interests are we acting?’ This special issue foregrounds a moral purpose in educational research and aims to examine ethnographies of education for social justice through a variety of lenses and scenarios. In each of the papers, our underlying assumption is that ethnography of education and being an ethnographer are linked to social and moral responsibility. Our hope is that we can generate truly useful knowledge for educational change and social transformation in the interests of educational praxis and also social justice. In our original call for papers, we looked for ways to explicate the creation of spaces where researchers and participants empower the research process and generate dialogues of mutual transformation. The ways in which ethnographic research practices can contribute to participants’ autonomous constructions of themselves, ability to reflect critically and control their own educational practices based on propositional knowledge that can be incorporated into their teaching practices, are sometimes insufficiently articulated. And this is the critical point. The analysis of the information and the interaction during research provides knowledge that serves to focus the attentionof researchparticipants onwhat they already, implicitly, know. It also enables them to develop that knowledge and allows them to have a point of reference to fit to their own experiences. We wish to extend this lens for analysis towards students, parents, community leaders, and any other people who can claim an interest in or concern for educational processes, practices, and praxis, from a social justice standpoint. We are excited to be curating this rich collection of papers that includes a diversity of approaches, research, narratives, and voices. Across this special issue, different educational practices have been explored in such a way not only to foreground the participatory potential of the researched but also to generate emancipatory spaces for different social actors within education to make sense of their own condition and position, and to co-construct, in a meaningful way, powerful knowledge among and of themselves. The cores of interest are distinct in each article but there is a contextual sensitivity, there is coherence and there is critical reflection. In this sense, the ethnographic research presented in this special issue shows a critical perspective, inhabiting a critical framework that recognises the need to contribute to a process of social transformation; it emphasises the creation of a space where researchers and participants empower the research process towards explanatory critique and social transformation. One of the values of ethnographic research is its potential to generate deeper and richer knowledge about specific activities in their particular contexts, but the idea of transformation