Between Anthropology and History: a perspective for educational ethnography

Abstract

This text presents a perspective for educational ethnography with the goal of offering a contribution to the development of qualitative research in Education. It seeks to emphasize the heuristic value of the approach and the importance of the multidisciplinary character of the investigations for which the school is an object of study. The exposition returns to the origins of educational ethnography and the adhesions that characterize it since the 1960’s, in contrast to the paradigmatic tensions that occur in the realm of sociology. It highlights the contribution of some researchers and international groups in this fi eld, particularly detailing the concepts developed at the Department of Education Research (DIE) of Mexico, due to their particularities and the interest that they raised among Brazilian researchers. The last part of the paper presents an educational ethnography that is situated at the intersection of anthropology and history, suggesting a greater appropriation, by ethnographers in the educational fi eld, of the theoretical development of cultural history realized in recent decades. In this way, it seeks to indicate the fruitfulness of the ethnographic perspective for a broader understanding of the problems that currently affect the Brazilian school.