Description of the Paper - topic, research question, objective, purpose, value, conceptual or theoretical framework, state of the art. Ethnography demands that the researcher becomes involved, participates in and remains immersed in the social settings they study for an extended period, and often promising to contribute in some way. At the same time, there is a need to maintain marginality from the social life of those they study and their participant role(s) in order to analyse, interpret, record and report their data. This paper describes the difficulties of managing these two, potentially, conflictual roles in a study of creativity and performativity cultures in an English Primary school. The author reports a situation in which he had for one year been researching the impact of performative policies on school culture, involving data collection and analysis on the school's attempts to maximise pupil performance in national attainment tests. At the end of this period he was invited to lead a school initiative to raise standards through action research aimed at improving teaching and learning strategies. The paper explores how marginality was maintained and distance from the school improvement initiative established. . The research team undertook sustained 'involved' observation in six contrasting English primary schools located in five Local Education Authorities. The main focus is how the teachers implement performativity policies in the schools and the impact of this on their professional and personal 'selves' as they also attempt to implement creativity policies. The paper focuses on the researcher's involvement in one of these schools. Conclusions or expected outcomes or findings. In the paper we will look at" the management of research roles in the social setting being studied " the strategies the school management used to try and enlist the researcher's support and participation in the school improvement initiative " the implications of this for the management of marginality in ethnography