This symposium will address key challenges for ethnographical research in teaching and learning practice, and also consider pedagogical and methodological issues and questions that arise in this process. In doing so, we discuss perspectives from ethnographical school and classroom research

from Spain, Austria, Denmark, Germany, and the US, which use critical classroom research approaches to sharpen micro-ethnographical analysis. The symposium reflects this tradition and puts light on the necessity of keeping the traditions alive in critical dialog with macro-, meso-, and micro-studies. Further, the symposium puts light on ethnography in the inner world of education and learning, sharpening the question: What is happing in the classroom anno 2017?  This question is addressed on several levels of education, from kindergarten to universities, from outside to inside schools, and from learner perspectives as well as teacher perspectives.

Ethnography that focuses on professional knowledge emphasises that a teacher uses several modes of knowledge to establish a personal culture of teaching: He draws on personal knowledge which he has acquired, and on practical knowledge that enables him to perform in class. A teacher relies on this knowledge because it provides personal orientations through which he comprehends classroom contexts and performs professionally in modernized classroom contexts.

While focussing on strategies for ethnographical analyses of the inner world of this the modernized classroom research, the projects presented within the symposium renew the tradition of critical classroom research by close up analysis of the new types of teaching and learning strategies and interactions between teacher and students. Furthermore, empirical research demonstrates how schools and educational settings bring innovation to learning contexts outside the classroom, but also face contrasts and practices inside the classroom. Hereby, ethnographical analysis points at the dilemma between the political and educational discourse outside school referring to progressive innovation and the practical pedagogical discourse inside school which refers to more conventional conditions and a new type of schoolifization.

Classroom Ethnographies in Dialogue A and B is motivated as a double session. The list of papers and authors refers to experienced researcher and to perspectives from ethnographical school and classroom research from Spain, Austria, Denmark, Germany, and the US. The aim is to use critical classroom research approaches to sharpen micro-ethnographical analysis. We have 6 papers, 8 authors and apply for a double session: Abstract/papers: (paper 1) Clemens Wieser (Austria) Personal knowledge and professional development: How experienced teachers develop personal orientations for teaching to address specific classroom contexts (Paper 2) Karen Borgnakke, Denmark, Ethnographical analyses of the modernized classroom – close up (paper 3) Vibeke Røn Noer, Denmark When classroom becomes school (Paper 4) Juana M. Sancho-Gil Fernando Hernández-Hernandez (Spain)Expanding classrooms, expanding the ethnographic gaze (Paper 5) Louise Klinge (Denmark)What is also happening in schools today? (Paper 6) Barbara Dennis (US) & Christina Huf (GE): Counteracting the adult- child binary – New perspectives on children’s learning through critical ethnography