Indigenous Children In and Out of Schools

LUYKX, AUROLYN; PADAWER, ANA

Comparing Ethnographies: Toward an Ethnology of Education for the Americas

American Educational Research Association (AERA)

Lugar: Washington DC; Año: 2017; p. 59 - 90

This is a moment in the history of educational research when scholars are beginning to recognize that research conducted in only one country cannot fairly represent the meanings and trajectories of education in the world as a whole. There are new efforts?often spurred by researchers from the global South?to take all voices into account (e.g. Bagchi et al. 2014; Connell 2007; Manzon 2011). The edited volume we propose, Comparing Ethnographies: Toward an Ethnology of Education across the Americas, is part of that emerging movement, and would be seen as particularly significant if published by AERA from the center of educational research in the global North. The proposed volume, focused on ethnographies of education as conducted in Latin American countries on the one hand and in the United States on the other, aims to show what can be learned by comparing research across national and linguistic boundaries. It will also ask how other scholars can carry out such comparative work in spite of the challenges inherent in the task. The book aims to convince readers that work done in all parts of the hemisphere is significant and needed to expand the boundaries of their own research and theorizing, and that finding and using that work is feasible. Our long-term goal is to contribute toward building an ?ethnology of education? of global applicability, that is, an anthropologically and sociologically informed understanding of education grounded in ethnographic cases and stretching beyond the national borders that often limit the international relevance of educational research. The core of the volume consists of five co-authored chapters that compare key ethnographic studies done in two or more countries, seeking to understand both the different contexts in which they were done and the different approaches that scholars used in studying similar educational problems. The authors of each chapter had not previously worked with each other, so had to face challenges in crossing both linguistic, discursive and conceptual boundaries in order to do comparisons. These exercises attempt both to apply existing methodological guidelines for comparison and to offer new insights and guidance for future comparative ethnography?and indeed all comparative educational research.