The 2017 Annual Meeting Theme

The Ethnography in Education Research Forum invites submissions for its 38th annual meeting. Our theme, Ethnography in Action, corresponds with our celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Practitioner Inquiry Day. This year’s theme highlights a concern at the heart of practitioner inquiry, community-based research, and action research more broadly: ethnographic research as a form of social action. In the midst of increasing economic disparities, deepening racialized, religious, and class divisions, and a rise in precarity, trauma, and fear across the globe, the need for action rarely has seemed more pressing. 

Ethnographic research has long provided a powerful vehicle for investigating the complexity of social problems and explaining how people experience and make sense of these problems in their everyday lives. During the past 20 years, we have witnessed the development of new and innovative as well as more ethical and inclusive approaches to using ethnographic research in the service of social action. Increasingly, ethnographic methods are being used in collaborative work, transformation-oriented projects, locally engaged policy reform research, and in the production and use of film in activist efforts. We have a great deal to learn from these creative developments and what they have been able to achieve. To this end, we invite researchers and practitioners who use ethnographic methods to come together to share and reflect on what has been learned and achieved in using ethnography in action.

After 30 years, Practitioner Inquiry Day remains faithful to its roots and provides a dedicated space for educators, youth, families, and community organizers to come together and inquire into, theorize, and collectively make meaning of their sites of practice. This year we celebrate these contributions and reflect on ways practitioner and action research intersects with ethnography. Practitioner Inquiry Day grew from an intentional shift, both in the U.S. and internationally, toward nurturing teacher research, action, and participatory research as well as bringing a critical lens to educational research more broadly. The intent of Practitioner Inquiry Day is to provide a space for university, school, and community-based researchers to share their scholarship. Participants include K-12 teachers, community college and university teachers, public and independent school leaders, community organizers, social activists, and others who share a commitment to democratizing the discourse around teaching, learning, and leading to include the voices and ideas of a wider span of participants.                  

The Forum welcomes scholars at all career stages seeking a supportive venue for sharing their ethnographic work at various stages of development. A longstanding trademark of the Forum is student involvement, both in conference coordination and in participation. The Forum provides a space for researchers and practitioners who use ethnographic methods in their work to come together across generations to share and learn from one another and, in so doing, to become part of a community interested in education and youth studies, and in working toward social justice more broadly. We invite you to join us for what is certain to be an enjoyable, enriching, and re-invigorating conference.