In 2014, Alice Goffman published her six-year ethnographic study, On the Run. Goffman’s research foregrounded the experiences of young African American men in Philadelphia, along with their interactions with peers, police, and crime. Goffman’s aim in examining these lived experiences in a still-highly racialised and materially disadvantaged context was to both complexify and contest the de rigueur negative construction and positioning of Black American men vis-à-vis criminality. However, her ethnographic study became known subsequently for other reasons – most notably, a widespread critique of the ethics of her own involvement in potentially illicit activities, her ethnographic representation of these activities in her account, and, for our purposes here, her un-reflexive positionality in relation to the study as a white female researcher.

We begin with this recent controversial ethnographic example, albeit from another academic domain, in order to highlight the key issue of how to conduct critical ethnographic research with minoritised/marginalised participants in education. Crucially, this requires an ethnographic research approach that does not end up re-inscribing disadvantage and differential power relations for minoritised/marginalised participants, particularly when the researchers are themselves from dominant positions in relation to ethnicity, class, gender and/or sexuality.

Drawing on our own critical ethnographic work in Indigenous language education (May) and health and sexuality education (Fitzpatrick), we explore the confluence of factors required to ensure that ethnographic research with minoritised/marginalised participants remains ethical and socially just, as well as empowering for rather than disadvantageous to those research participants. In particular, we focus on three key areas of the ethnographic process that we believe require critical attention by educational researchers: initial question setting; relationships and reciprocity; and positionality, reflection and reflexivity. In combination, we argue that addressing consciously, deliberately and effectively each of these elements is crucial for ethnographic work in education to be socially just and empowering (Fitzpatrick & May, 2019).

Conducting socially just and ethical ethnographic work in education requires specific attention to three key elements: initial question setting; relationships and reciprocity; and positionality, reflection and reflexivity. First, the issue of question setting, for us, requires the acknowledgement of the power of the ‘ethnographer’s gaze’ (May, 1997), or what Bourdieu (1990) has described as ‘the epistemological privilege of the observer’ (p.14). Educational ethnographers working with minoritised/marginalised participants thus need to interrogate the bases of their often a priori questions, and ask, first and foremost, whether the topic of investigation connects with, and is important or useful to, the people with whom they are engaging. To ensure this, Palmer and Caldas (2017) argue that knowledge must be ‘constructed and interpreted from the vantage point of the people whose voices are marginalized’ (p. 384). We draw on the work of two anthropologists, Conquergood (1985) and Ortner (1991), to provide a useful framework for this. Secondly, socially just and empowering ethnographic research in education requires recasting the usual asymmetry of the traditional ethnographic research-researched relationship to one that is based on active dialogue and partnership. This in turn requires the researcher to be connected with, accepted, and trusted by the research participants. It also requires that researchers work within an ethical framework that is transparent to, and accepted by, the research participants. Here we draw on the work of Bishop and Glynn (1999) and Smith (2012), and their development of Kaupapa Māori research, as a basis for working ethically within Indigenous educational contexts. Thirdly, we highlight the importance of addressing the researcher’s own positionality in the research, particularly when it includes dominant positionalities, and any related relations of power and social hierarchies. As Madison (2012) argues, within such a framework ‘we are accountable for our own research paradigms, our own positions of authority, and our own moral responsibility relative to representation and interpretation’ (p. 9). We draw specifically on our own ethnographic work here (May, 1994; Hill and May, 2013; Fitzpatrick 2013), in order to provide specific examples of the use of such positionality.

We argue that significantly more attention needs to be paid to the ethics of ethnographic work in education that involves minoritised/marginalised participants. We also provide relevant theoretical frameworks and examples by which socially just, empowering, and critical ethnographic work can be conducted.

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