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Critical Ethnography

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-02329-8_28-1

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Critical Ethnography

Deborah Palmer and Blanca Caldas

Contents
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Abstract
Critical ethnography is a qualitative approach to research that explicitly sets out to
critique hegemony, oppression, and asymmetrical power relations in order to
foster social change. While all forms of critical ethnography work to interrogate
the structures of power and lay bare inequities suffered by marginalized commu-
nities, some critical ethnographers work directly with community members,
engaging in participatory research and ongoing dialogue with those being
researched. Recently, critical ethnography has taken a turn toward exploring
indigenous ways of knowing and producing knowledge, which has led the field
in new and exciting directions.
This chapter will review scholarship that has worked to develop a coherent
foundation for critical ethnographic research in terms of elaborating a range of

D. Palmer (*)
School of Education, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
e-mail: debpalmer@colorado.edu
B. Caldas (*)
Second Language Education and Elementary Education, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities,
Minneapolis, MN, USA
e-mail: bcaldasc@umn.edu

# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 1

K. King et al. (eds.), Research Methods in Language and Education, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02329-8_28-1
2 D. Palmer and B. Caldas

approaches, dealing with issues of accountability and reliability, managing

researcher ethics, and ensuring credibility of both the research process and
findings. We explore in particular the challenges related to attempting to conduct
critical ethnography within traditional research structures, such as Institutional
Review Boards for research conducted with human subjects, and institutional
expectations for publication.
Finally, in recent years, new contexts and needs have moved critical ethnog-
raphers to explore different compatible and contrasting epistemologies. Particu-
larly, indigenous ways of knowing and creating knowledge have influenced an
increasing number of researchers. This opening up of the field allows innovative
and creative explorations to critique, denounce, and move to action.

Keywords
Action research • Critical ethnography • Indigenous ways of knowing • Relational
accountability

Early Developments

Critical ethnography is an approach that draws on research and theory to critique

hegemony, oppression, asymmetrical power relations, and the normalization of these
structures in society, in order to potentially foster social change in direct or indirect
ways. Critical ethnography shares methods with conventional ethnography, that is,
long-term immersion in the field, participant observation, interviews, artifact collec-
tion, etc., to provide a “thick description” of the culture, daily lives, values, systems
of beliefs, norms, and language practices of a specific culture or community (Geertz
1973). What sets critical ethnography apart is its focus on the way individuals within
a marginalized community engage in praxis (Freire 1970) – a cycle of action and
reflection – and on how members of the community exercise agency for cultural
production and transformation. Madison (2011) and Kincheloe and McLaren (2000)
describe critical ethnography as the doing or performance of critical theory whose
aim is to deconstruct hegemony, and unveil oppression as an act of intellectual
rebellion (Madison 2011) while imagining “what could be” (Thomas 1993).
Kincheloe and McLaren (1994) argue that critical researchers should use their
scholarship for social critique against covert or overt forms of privilege that repro-
duce and normalize social oppression, while at the same time understanding the
intersectionality of race, class, and gender oppression in order to avoid oppression
hierarchies. As Carspecken (1996) puts it, “criticalists find contemporary society to
be unfair, unequal, and both subtly and overtly oppressive for many people. We do
not like it, and want to change it” (p. 7). Therefore, critical ethnography is openly
ideological (Lather 1986), which unavoidably colors each stage of the research
process. From a critical ethnographic perspective, all research is ideologically
tinged; critical ethnography is merely open about it, which allows an audience to
better judge the credibility of the research.
Critical Ethnography 3

In the field of educational research, critical ethnography started to gain promi-

nence during the late 1970s and early 1980s (Anderson 1989). It has drawn influence
from neo-Marxist critical theorists, critical feminist and Freirean research (Lather
1986), and the contributions of interpretative paradigms in anthropology and soci-
ology (Anderson 1989). Critical ethnography was born of the need to move critical
theory toward practice and move ethnography out of its alleged neutrality (Anderson
1989). Some critical ethnographers focus on the task of exposing hegemony and
inequity so that others (such as policy makers, educators, or activists) might take
action in order to change those conditions, while others engage in participatory
action research for more direct outcomes within communities. A classic example of
the former is Paul Willis’ (1977) Marxist analysis of resistance, agency, and the
reproduction of social class among male high school students from working class
origins in Britain. Other examples of this kind of critical ethnography are present in
the work of Anyon (1981) in the USA, Connell et al. (1982) in Australia, and
McLaren (1986) in Canada.
An early example of critical ethnography with direct participation and benefits to
the community is Sol Tax’s (1963) “action” ethnography on the Mesquakie settle-
ment in Iowa. Tax’s study was a collaboration between the researcher (as a trusted
insider) and the researched (members of the community) in order to solve commu-
nity issues, such as community division, vandalism, lack of educational funds for
college-ready Mesquakie people, and danger of losing autonomy over their schools.
Foley and Valenzuela (2005) argue that this often forgotten work was groundbreak-
ing since it dismantled the dichotomy between theoretical and applied knowledge. In
the 1990s, Carspecken (1991) and May (1994) became blueprints of educational
critical ethnographies in which researchers were involved with the community
beyond observation. Moreover, May – and later Heller (1999) – bridged critical
ethnography with sociolinguistic research examining minoritized language practices
in both liberatory and oppressive spaces at schools in New Zealand and Canada,
respectively. Whether involving direct action or offering thorough analysis, the
impetus behind critical ethnography is to provoke others to move to change.

Major Contributions

Scholars have tried to provide a coherent foundation for critical ethnographic

research in terms of approach, accountability, researcher ethics, and credibility.
Carspecken (1996) proposes a “five stage” approach for conducting critical ethnog-
raphy to add some systematicity. Carspecken’s first stage is “compiling a primary
record” (p. 45) in which the researcher engages in writing a thick description of the
research site and participants, preferably from the outsider perspective. The second
stage is “preliminary reconstructive analysis” (p. 93), which consists of the creation
of low- and high-level coding. Low-level codes are primarily descriptive and as
objective as possible with a certain degree of abstraction; high-level coding builds on
low-level codes for deeper analysis. During stage three, “dialogical data generation”
(p. 154), member checking occurs. In the fourth stage, “describing system relations”
4 D. Palmer and B. Caldas

(p. 197), the themes that emerged throughout the previous stages are analyzed and
described across sessions in order to corroborate, merge, and split themes and/or
create subthemes. Finally, during the fifth stage, “system relations as explanations of
findings” (p. 202), the ethnographer attempts to match the findings within the
community studies with an existing social theory to explain environmental condi-
tions, social reproduction, and cultural production and agency.
Madison (2011) conceptualizes critical ethnography as a three-part process
highlighting the fact that often theory and method are intertwined in such a way
that “my theory was my method, and my method was my theory” (p. 21). The
starting point for Madison is introspection in order to identify the researcher’s
connection with the issue to be explored while identifying other scholars engaged
in similar quests, and identifying the participants to be “witnessed” (Madison 2010).
The second stage of this process is to prepare a lay summary with the purpose of
gaining access to the target population. Apart from including a research question,
data collection and ethical methods, description of the population, and time frame,
Madison (2011) maintains that a description of who the researcher is, the purposes
behind the study, planned forms of representing data, selection processes, benefits
and risks for participants, questions regarding confidentiality and anonymity, and
considerations for data collection in tune with the participants’ culture are crucial in
order to be accountable to the researched community. The third stage of the research
process for Madison involves building rapport between researcher and participants.
Madison’s model relies heavily on the interview for the primary source of data
collection. However, in critical ethnography, researcher and interviewee become
more “conversational partners” (Madison 2011, p. 40). This kind of collaborative
interview attenuates hierarchies and becomes dialogical due to the partnership
fostered during the aforementioned second stage. Critical ethnography according
to Madison is carried out when a researcher helps legitimize and make visible
interviewees’ silenced realities, in juxtaposition with an official narrative, in the
name of transformation and social justice. Central to this is the idea that knowledge
is constructed and interpreted from the vantage point of the people whose voices are
marginalized. Knowledge produced by silenced groups become theory in what
Moraga and Anzaldua (1981) call “theory in the flesh” (p. 23). Foley and
Valenzuela’s (2005) description of the ethics underlying the production of critical
ethnographies shares similar principles with regard to the interview: “a dialogic style
of interviewing; intimate, highly personal informant relations; a community review
of the manuscript; and writing in ordinary language” (p. 224). Ojha et al. (2009) use
Madison’s approach in their work on the academic, political, and activist engage-
ment of the authors in community-based strategies for forest conservation in Nepal
among power differentials and inequalities. In the field of education, Silverman
(2013) uses Madison’s tenets to examine music as a democratic form of expression
and transformation in a music class in an urban high school in New York.
The most prominent feature that distinguishes Madison’s approach from
Carspecken’s is the greater emphasis on the need for accountability and transpar-
ency. Madison and an increasing number of researchers (e.g., Chilisa 2012; Wilson
2008) insist that critical ethnographers need to embrace vulnerability through self-
Critical Ethnography 5

reflexivity of their own positionality created in dialogue with participants. Madison

points out that the unchecked/unmarked privileges, prejudices, and questions of
power and positionality that accompany a researcher are issues that the critical
ethnographer needs to (re)examine every step of the way while doing research and
calls for self-exploration to uncover motivations, fears, and knowledge. According
to Anderson (1989), this dialogical process involves the “(a) researcher’s constructs,
(b) informants’ commonsense constructs, (c) research data, (d) researcher’s ideolog-
ical biases, and (e) structural and historical forces that informed the social construc-
tion under study” (p. 254–255).
In the same vein, Conquergood (1985) describes the ethical and moral responsi-
bility of the researcher toward the researched community. Using his own experience
as an activist and advocate ethnographer among Hmong and Lao refugees in
Chicago and the ethical tension he experienced as a white, middle-class man,
Conquergood defines five research stances toward the researched: “the custodian’s
rip-off,” “the skeptic’s cop-out,” “the enthusiast’s infatuation,” “the curator’s exhi-
bitionism,” and “dialogical performance.” The “custodian’s rip-off” is the unethical
stance that commodifies the knowledge obtained for self-gain, while the “skeptic’s
cop-out” engages in detachment and othering. The “enthusiast’s infatuation”
becomes unethical when trivializing the community’s practices, while the “curator’s
exhibitionism” exoticizes and romanticizes the other. Finally, Conquergood’s “dia-
logical performance” embraces the cacophony or harmony of different voices –
“heteroglossia” (Bakhtin 1998) – in order to get closer to the body, improvisation
and entropy. This dialogical performance does not stop at understanding the personal
and the interrelationships with others in the doing of culture, but goes on to engage in
cultural politics, questioning power, and resistance.
Acknowledging that one of the perils of engaging in critique is the risk to a
researcher’s credibility, Thomas (1993) describes eight traps that threaten critical
ethnographers while conducting research. Thomas discourages concealing any data
that may not fit a researcher’s political agenda, as well as using conceptual clichés/
buzzwords, which could prevent the data from speaking for itself. He also warns
researchers against overgeneralization and stridency with little or no evidence and
encourages strengthening arguments having in mind audiences less familiar and
potentially more critical of the research approach. Finally, Thomas urges critical
researchers to embrace the changes that they will necessarily undergo when studying
and becoming immersed in a community, and to open themselves up to the experi-
ence, both positive and negative, without romanticizing it. Taken together, these
contributions frame the field of critical ethnography and provide guidelines to
researchers carrying out this important and challenging work.

Work in Progress

In recent decades, critical ethnographers have engaged in some creative interweav-

ing of research approaches traditionally perceived as strictly separated and even
conflicting (Lincoln and Guba 2005), a fertile ground for new modes of inquiry.
6 D. Palmer and B. Caldas

Performance ethnography and (performance) autoethnography are two variants of

critical ethnography according to Madison (2011) in that they have political focus
and are dialogical in nature. Performance ethnography engages subjects in the actual
“doing of culture and democracy” (Jones 2006, p. 344). Such performances shape
experience, meaning, culture, and its production. This methodology provides a
different lens that is centered in the body as the source of knowledge addressing
other bodies: concrete bodies that cannot be invisibilized and demand to be
addressed. Madison (2010) extends the centrality of the body in performance
ethnography even to the researcher, calling her/him a “co-performative witness” in
that researchers live dialogically with participants within their spaces and struggles
at certain points within their sociocultural context. Madison (2011) defines
autoethnography as “the ethnography of one’s own social, ethnic, or cultural
group” (p. 197), and she places it as another form of critical ethnography when it
engages in critical self-reflexivity. Denzin (2009) goes further to place
autoethnography at the intersection of the personal, political, historical, and cultural
while critiquing cultural reproduction of everyday practices.
It is clear there is a strong need for performance in critical ethnography since in
contrast with the traditional written presentation of research, performance begins to
encompass the nuances and complexities of everyday cultural practices. Spry (2011)
describes the process of creating a performance autoethnography as a parallel
journey of self-creation and self-reflection while negotiating relationships with
oneself and others. Spry reflects on the complexity of positionalities by embracing
the coexistance of herself as participant observant, and herself as the “performative-
I.” While Spry engages in performance autoethnography to problematize injustice
connecting personal and national grief and healing post 9/11, Denzin (2003) uses
performative autoethnography to critique and juxtapose historical and present rep-
resentations of Native Americans drawing on dissonant multivocal (Bakhtin 1998)
sources, such as memories, history textbooks, previous research, and popular cul-
ture. Madison (2010) turns her fieldwork notes, journal entries, and findings regard-
ing a group of activists in contemporary Ghana into a multifaceted combination of
theatrical plays, poetic narrative monologues, and creative nonfiction in which her
multiple (and often contradictory) voices are intermeshed with the ones she “co-
performative witnessed” (p. 25).
There are also important similarities between critical ethnography and action
research/participatory action research (PAR) in that both include an emphasis on
transformation, critical stance, and collaboration with the participants as core-
searchers (Barab et al. 2004). Action research was inspired by Freire (1970) and
Freire’s work in Tanzania in the early 1970s (Hall 2005). In this participatory strand
of critical ethnography, the researcher becomes “researcher activist,” and as such, the
researcher needs to focus on three crucial aspects: trust when developing relation-
ships with the community, intervention as the researcher and the researched cocreate
opportunities for social change, and the sustainability of such change (Barab
et al. 2004).
The intersections among performance (auto)ethnography, (participatory) action
research, and critical ethnography described above are present in the work of what
Critical Ethnography 7

Murillo (2004) calls “mojado ethnographers,” as the Other becomes the researcher,
further challenging issues of objectivity and neutrality and embracing vulnerability
and ethical and political responsibility. Paris (2011), for example, shared the lan-
guage practices and cultural performances of the Latino, Black, and Pacific Islander
high school students he worked with, thus embracing his insider/outsider status.
Similarly, Alim (2004) not only shared linguistic repertoire with his participants, but
he also performed such cultural practice in his own writing. Mendoza-Denton (2008)
relived the stereotypes she faced as a Latina in California as her work on female gang
members and their linguistic and cultural practices were assumed to be
autoethnographic. Malsbary (2014) highlighted her positionality as a transnational
biracial woman to disclose her “hyphenated epistemologies” (p. 377) as a way to
bring herself close to the immigrant ESL lifers she researched and their resistance to
racio-linguistic policies in high school. As researchers continue to seek new ways to
unveil hegemony, engage with marginalized communities, and work toward lasting
change, new innovations that resemble, echo, and/or come out of critical ethnogra-
phy are continually emerging.

Problems and Difficulties

One issue faced by critical ethnographers is the question of validity. There is a

certain skepticism regarding the rigor of the methods in critical ethnography to create
generalizable and/or reliable knowledge that could potentially be translated into
policy or practice. Lather (1986) argues that questions of validity for critical eth-
nography must be connected to its principles. Herr and Anderson (2005) outline five
validity or quality criteria for action research, which can also apply to critical
ethnography. These are dialogic, catalytic, process, democratic, and outcome valid-
ity. Dialogic validity comes in the form of peer review; that is, inquiry that is carried
out collaboratively with other researchers has greater dialogic validity. Catalytic
validity refers to the dynamic nature of research, which is in constant flux due to the
transformation of understanding for both researcher and participants; research that
reflects this transformation process is considered to have catalytic validity. Process
validity is related to having a strong methodology that allows for triangulation of
data and trustworthiness. Democratic validity ensures that the outcomes of the
research will benefit the community researched. Finally, outcome validity refers to
assessment of the achievement of community-based goals.
Another challenge critical ethnographers face is that of managing the inevitable
conflicts between collaborative, engaged research projects and traditional concep-
tions of research produced as a researcher-only endeavor. For instance, in the USA,
the process of approval and monitoring by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) has
the potential to push researchers to deviate from the main goals of critical ethnog-
raphy (i.e., collaboration for social change). When describing the IRB process for a
critical ethnographer, Denzin (2003) argues that this one-size-fits-all process has
potential to disregard non-Western ways of knowing and understanding. Confiden-
tiality and consent seem far less applicable – or at least quite different – in
8 D. Palmer and B. Caldas

collaborative research; anonymity is often optional and sometimes undesirable

(Denzin 2003). Moreover, due to the transformational orientation of critical ethnog-
raphy, changes in the study are likely to occur with frequency, making it impractical
to await IRB approval for amendments in research proposals and protocols, espe-
cially when changes have also been negotiated within the researched community.
Likewise, central IRB concepts such as respect, beneficence, and justice take on new
meanings in critical ethnographic work.
In general, it seems necessary to consider reframing the IRB process for critical
ethnography and its new reformulations (Denzin 2003; Madison 2011). Critical
ethnography as a mode of research is “more process oriented, collaborative, cultur-
ally located and contentious” (Madison 2011, p. 136). The American Association of
University Professors reported the inadequacies of the IRB procedures, stating that
“the unchecked power granted” (Thomson et al. 2006, p. 96) to the review board
could become a threat to academic freedom. The lack of a comprehensive appeal
process has potential to become a surveillance device with bias against participatory
research projects that pose little risk and potentially much benefit to participants.
Some projects may be rejected due to reviewers’ views on the importance of the
knowledge gained, or reviewers’ definition of reasonable risk, or their own research
preferences. The current IRB process discourages researchers from conducting
critical, engaged research; it remains grounded in a bioscientific model that seems
incompatible with the goals and processes of critical ethnography (Denzin 2003;
Madison 2011).
Beyond the IRB process, actually the traditional perception of the process of
knowledge production and dissemination in the academy – i.e., that knowledge is
produced mainly by researchers and disseminated primarily through publication in
academic journals – makes it difficult for advocate-activist researchers to engage in
studies that fulfill the demands of academia, while trying to maintain a hands-on and
political research agenda that goes beyond writing cultural critiques. Foley and
Valenzuela (2005) point out that the pressures of scholarly production, tenure,
and/or degree-granting processes have a tendency to prevent researchers from
pursuing a more politically active role in the community, depriving them of the
opportunity to be directly involved in grassroots organization and limiting them to
work within academia.
Along these lines, because the question of accountability toward the researched
community is crucial, critical ethnographers are constantly challenged to make their
research accessible to the community, reducing the load of scientific/academic
jargon commonly used to disseminate knowledge and seeking out ways to present
and disseminate research to lay communities. Research appears to be traditionally
intended almost exclusively for academic audiences, dissertation, and/or tenure
committees and other researchers in the field and has been disseminated in the
form of books, peer-reviewed articles, policy briefs, book chapters, or academic
presentations. Yet it is possible to imagine a new ethnography where the researched
community members are active participants in such dissemination as the authors and
authorities of their own experiences, especially through non-textual means such as
oral presentations or performances (Conquergood 1991).
Critical Ethnography 9

Future Directions

Critical ethnography has become a fertile ground for innovation within educational
research. Researchers have taken up the tools of critical ethnography within a wide
range of fields, including educational language policy and practice (McCarty
et al. 2011), science and mathematics education (Tan et al. 2012), teaching and
teacher education (Fitzpatrick 2013), and bilingual education and cultural studies
(Cervantes-Soon 2014; Vaught 2011). At the same time, critical ethnography has
been enhanced by research that has taken on different perspectives within critical
theory, including post colonialism, critical race theory, Chicana feminism, queer
theory, postcolonial feminism, and critical indigenous studies. One might argue that
the merging of critical ethnography with all of these far-ranging frameworks has the
potential to make the endeavor of critical ethnography disappear in its openness. On
the contrary, this cross pollination enriches the field of critical ethnography since all
approaches share the objective of democratizing our ways of conducting research.
The hybridization of research paradigms and methods that promote further cross-
fertilization in critical ethnography has made possible its evolution using elements
from a diversity of ways of knowing and alternative research approaches. Madison
(2011) notes an affinity to critical ethnography within indigenous methodologies in
particular. She elaborates on an indigenous ontological approach that links the four
seasons of the year and the different research stages for self-awareness, coupled with
the interdependence of research and nature to create balance. Adhering to this
epistemology ensures that a researcher is prepared to conduct research within the
context. The striking resemblance of indigenous approaches to critical ethnography
is also evident in Smith’s (2012) description of the purposes of indigenous research
as an endeavor that “documents social injustice, that recovers subjugated knowl-
edges, that helps create spaces for the voices of the silenced to be expressed and
‘listened to,’ and that challenge racism, colonialism and oppression. . .” (p.198).
Indigenous approaches to research, as with other branches of critical ethnography,
place the critical component not only on the lenses of the researcher who denounces
social inequalities and/or intervenes for social change but also requires the researcher
to be critical of Western research canons and to challenge colonizing ways of
knowing. Some of the indigenous projects described by Smith (2012) are similar
to forms that critical ethnography can take, such as storytelling through poetry
(Denzin 2003, 2009), performance and scripts (Conquergood 1991; Spry 2011),
testimonies or oral histories (Denzin 2003, 2009), and interventions (Ojha,
et al. 2009; Silverman 2013).
Affinity to critical ethnography is not the sole condition for cross-fertilization
with other methodological approaches. Unlike traditional ethnography, critical eth-
nography is not necessarily averse to embedding quantitative methodologies into the
work in order to improve credibility. The inclusion of quantitative methodologies
can potentially improve understanding of the complexities of the life experience of a
given community. For instance, May (1994) included a pre- and post personally
referenced evaluation for English language literacy performances to demonstrate
external validity. Mertens (2007) provided examples of indigenous ethnography and
10 D. Palmer and B. Caldas

participatory action research – both of which are compatible with critical ethnogra-
phy – to illustrate this collaboration. In those examples, quantitative data was
collected – the former through standardized literacy assessments, and the latter
through participant sampling that reflected the diversity within the community – in
order to build trust among participants, and as a form of accountability for the
outcomes of the research project. The mixed-methods approach exemplified by
Mertens (2007) points to the possibility of this blending with the adoption of a
cyclical model that includes the community as an active participant in research
decisions and purposes.
Since its inception, critical ethnography has been evolving and expanding. As it
takes in new perspectives and incorporates different approaches, it grows stronger.
Both its fluidity and receptiveness to new voices and innovations are in tune with
critical ethnography’s original purposes of transformation, justice, and shared power.
Critical ethnography continually works to bring marginalized communities to the
center as agents of change, supporting them to be principal actors of their own
experiences.

Cross-References

▶ Ethnography and Language Education

▶ Ethnography of Language Policy
▶ Linguistic Ethnography

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Teresa McCarty and Serafin Coronel-Molina: Language Education Planning and

Policies by and for Indigenous Peoples. In: Volume: Language Policy and Political
Issues in Education
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas: Linguistic Human Rights in Education. In Volume: Lan-
guage Policy and Political Issues in Education

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Critical Ethnography 11

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