National Curricular need to be interpreted in terms of the cultures and experience of learners and adjusted accordingly, for example a literacy and history curriculum needs to include perspectives relevant to the local culture. Teachers, learners, families and communities mediate, appropriate, subvert, and challenge the processes of policy implementation, curriculum engagement and pedagogic practices to make educational experiences more meaningful. These articles exemplify the conflicts, the coping strategies and resolutions adopted by those at the policy implementation interface. Examination...

The prime focus on the social processes of schooling within educational ethnography has tended to marginalise or eschew the importance of other 'informal' educational sites. Other social institutions, such as family, community, media and popular culture, work and prisons are salient arenas in which behaviours and lives are regulated. They all interrelate and are all implicated in the generation, management and development of social identities and the social and cultural reproduction of structures and relations. Individuals, though, are not merely shaped by these social institutions, their...

What counts as ethnography and what counts as good ethnography are both highly contested. This volume brings together chapters presenting a diversity of views on some of the current issues and practices in ethnographic methodology. It does not try to present a single coherent view but, through its heterogeneity, illustrates the strengths and impact of the debate. The collection includes chapters on the ethnographic research process; the use of photographic diaries; the idea of toleration in the research process; and the personal aspects of research. It has chapters that question...

This book draws on the work of three experienced ethnographers who have studied the effects of education policy on teachers' work in the United Kingdom and Sweden. The book traces some of the issues and experiences in the development of ethnographic projects examining policy developments-from planning, through analysis and writing, to outcomes as methodological articles. Ethnographic research into teachers' work seeks to understand educational and social change. As in other European countries, the UK education system has undergone massive restructuring since the late 1970s, with proliferating...

The authors use ethnographic research to consider the features of creative teaching and learning within the context of contemporary policy reforms. The blend of case-study material and implications for practice make this book attractive to primary teachers, school managers, policy makers, teacher educators and researchers.

Creative Learning in the Primary School uses ethnographic research to consider the main features of creative teaching and learning within the context of contemporary policy reforms. In particular, the authors are interested in the clash between two oppositional discourses - creativity and performativity - and how they are resolved in creative teacher practice. The book complements previous work by these authors on creative teaching by giving more consideration to creative learning.

The first section of the book explores the nature of creative teaching and learning by...