2: Opportunities for Teaching and Learning from Ethnographic Inquiry in a Local Community

In Chapter 1, we discussed historical/philosophical bases for the development and support of ethnographic writing as a means of education. In this chapter, we continue to develop an educational context for ethnographic writing by exploring the concept of research as an opportunity for learning. A series of visual images and notes from pupils’ research activities at a local drama theater are discussed and explored. Then some formative and transformative possibilities and consequences of ethnographically informed inquiry activities involving pupils, their teacher, and members of a local drama theater community are highlighted, and these possibilities and consequences are considered in relation with teaching and learning. We explore how a set of visual images composed during field research in a drama theater by a group of fifth-grade pupils could be used to create productive knowledge for education. Our discussion is based upon a set of visual images, pupils’ notes, and related comments, as well as discussions about how people build, acquire, and define knowledge and identities through reading and writing.