Blitzkrieg Ethnography: On the Transformation of a Method into a Movement

Abstract

In retrospect, it seems rather inevitable. What had been a quiet and perhaps peripheral aspect of educational research has moved rapidly to center stage. Ethnographic research on American education has heretofore been the activity of a small band of researchers, overwhelmingly trained in the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. But at present, it is finding widespread application among researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. And with this newfound popularity has come the mutation of both its epistemological underpinnings and its methodological applications.