In this paper out of an ongoing research on the history of the ethnography of education I start by describing the field of educational ethnography as a complex array made out of disciplines, national traditions and languages, and divergent purposes and institutional interests (Delamont, 2012; Levinson et al., 2000; Gordon, Holland, & Lahelma, 2001).

Such an array is in need for an umbrella-theory to cover this vast area of scientific endeavor I suggest. A theory proposed here, in order not only to give theoretically good reasons for educational ethnography, but also some methodological frames with reference to other big theories, is the sociology of knowledge as it has been developed in the 60ies of the last century (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).

Using exemplary research related to the social constructivism, namely ethnomethodology (Cicourel et al., 1974; Mehan, 2012; Macbeth, 2008) , the ethnography of communication (Cazden, 2001; Hymes, 1996) and cognitive anthropology (Hazlehurst, 2011; Hutchins, 1995) allows me to show how all of these today rather marginal approaches in current educational ethnography did contribute substantially to the overarching development of social constructivism/sociology of knowledge within educational ethnography. The look into three strands of ethnography on education and the quest for their systematically relevant contributions for the understanding of education yields a suggestion for a stronger theoretically and historically informed ethnographic research on education by means of ethnographic methods. 

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