Meta-Ethnographic Synthesis in Education: Challenges, Aims and Possibilities

Calls for deparochialization of educational research (Lingard 2006) have directed educational ethnography from the conventional research designs and from the study of single sites and local situations to the study of the circulation of cultural meanings, objects and identities in diffuse time-spaces (Marcus 1995: 96). In response to this call and following the already established tradition of use of meta-ethnography in health studies this volume explores the potentials of this method (Noblit & Hare, 1988) to unpick the interconnectedness of different educational sites which have been and are being studied ethnographically. Besides, metaethnographic analyses may also offer a credible response to the lessening of opportunities for original educational ethnographic research at times of limited resources.

The volume examines the forms of translocal and transtemporal ethnographic synthesis currently in use by educational ethnographers as well as the challenges and the possibilities that the method offers. It also addresses and attempts to respond to the question if meta-ethnography might be a means to sharpen ethnographers’ sensitivity for each other’s work and achievements in the past.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnography and Education.