Democratic Education: Ethnographic Challenges (Paperback)

A critical gaze is directed at Nordic countries where restructuring processes contradict a political discourse based on equality and comprehensive education. It is the immersion in the daily life of institutions and their participants that gives ethnography a particular edge in obtaining insights into what changes and what stays the same. This book provides a looking glass into the tensions and contradictions that New Right policies have introduced in educational institutions. Actors in the field experience frustration in introducing changes and controlling the direction of those changes. It is their voices that ethnographers try to hear and disseminate. Most ethnographers do not simply tell a (more or less) gripping story about the field--they aim to analyse the practices they encounter, and endeavour to render them into analytical narratives that tell different stories than those produced through policy research or questionnaires and interviews. Although these are not necessarily better stories, we suggest that they are particularly relevant in demonstrating the organisation and practice of producing difference.

Dennis Beach, Associate Professor of Educational Sciences, Göteburg University, Sweden.

Thomas Gitz-Johansen, Researcher, Department of Education, Roskilde University, Denmark.

Tuula Gordon, Fellow, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Janet Holland, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Human Science, South Bank University, UK.

Inger Anne Kvalbein, Associate Professor, Department of Teacher Education, Oslo University College, Norway.

Elina Lahelma, Academy Fellow, Department of Education, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Sirpa Lappalainen, Researcher, Department of Education, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Sverker Linblad, Professor, University of Uppsala, Department of Education, Sweden.

Elisabet Öhrn, Associate Professor, Department of Education, Göteburg University, Sweden.

Thomas S. Popkewitz, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.

Ulla-Maija Salo, Professor, University of Helsinki, Department of Home Economics and Craft Science, Finland.

Daniel Sundberg, Researcher, Department of Education, University of Växjö, Sweden.