Using the theories and concepts of space developed by Doreen Massey (Massey, 2013), of social class and ethnographic explanatory critique, this paper aims to contribute to generate possibilities of transformation in researched scenarios.

• According to Massey (Massey, 2013), we understand the concept of space in process and shaped through socio-spatial and material practices. These practices produce and contextualise the historical social relations of production, and also, their connections to individual identities and actions. Actions, from this perspective, are result of connections between space, place, time and the construction of social relations, practices, meaning and spatial identities.
• The concept of social class, following Marx, is understood that emerges historically and contemporaneously under specific socio-historical conditions and in relation to both the development of productive forces and social division of labour.
• Ethnography as explanatory critique has been the method we have engaged with in the research as a way to forge a scientifically critical ethnography for social transformation and cultural change on a local, state, national, or global level (Beach, 2018; Maisuria and Beach, 2017). Using a critical ethnographic research, we highlight each real situation is historically constructed and recognizes the need of changing the structures imposed on subordinated groups and the possibility to contribute to a process of transformation in researched scenarios. The interaction between researchers and researched groups, and the feedback of the research is meant to contribute to generate possibilities of change in the policies and practices of schools researched. In essence we consider the potential of the ethnography for a transformational change and this is under the foundation of validity (Lather, 1986) and as a means to help subordinated groups in the sense of conscientizacion (Freire, 1970)

This paper focuses on the values that identified from the interaction between researchers and researched groups and how this can possibly contribute to generate possibilities of change in investigated schools where cultural diversity is the ‘stigma’. As far as we know ethnographic research about cultural diversity, and stigmatised schools, it has highlighted a deep analysis about them even to show the potential that schools and teachers have in difficult context of exclusion (Beach, 2017; Beach and Lunneblad, 2011; Beach et al., 2013; Beach et al., 2018; Bunar, 2008; Lunneblad, Odenbrig and Hellman, 2017; Mercado and Espinosa, 2019; Paniagua, 2017; Riitaoja et al., 2019). However, there is not common, with some exceptions (Siekmann et al., 2019), to find ethnographic studies going beyond the reflection for research subjects and considering possibilities to change during the research process. We want to discover the critical potential and to realise their abilities for self-determination and rational control related to schools where there is a high cultural diversity. We will show what happens in different researched scenarios where the cultural diversity is very high.

The research questions in the paper are centred on the potentials for an inclusive school from a committed perspective in a research project on the cultural diversity in schools. They ask what are the discourses and practices by the ethnographical research in different research scenarios and in particular and specifically what are the different aspects that seem to promote the possibilities of deep (or transformational) change and which don’t in schools. We focus here in particular on the developments in two schools with a high percentage (90%) of immigrant and roman people. One school is located in a deprived context and another in a rich area. In the paper we will describe how the cultural diversity is present in a very different way and the changes and the silences about it during the research process.

The study is from two national projects involving 15 researchers from research teams in Andalusia, Aragon, Cantabria, Catalonia, Balearic Islands, La Rioja and Madrid: Families and schools - Discourses and everyday practices on the participation in compulsory education’ (EDU2012-32657) and Cultural diversity in the school - discourses, policies and practices (CSO2017-84872-R). The research, involves official documents, interviews, surveys, and ethnography considering the period between 1970 and 2018 from 18 communities in Spain responsible for implementing the law about cultural diversity in local schools. We are taking in this paper the data information from the ethnographic studies. In the Community of Aragon we are involved in a multi-sited (Eisenhart, 2017) study and multi-scale analysis in four schools. They are schools selected from the interest teachers shown to deep in after responding the survey. They are schools with at least 30% of immigrant population and one is located in urban area, two in a peri-urban and another in a rural area. Two of them were already analysed through the first project and we are now focussing again in them, continuing the fieldwork, through the second project, in order to know what are the policies there are for the cultural diversity and which are the changes during the ethnographic research process. One is a public school located in a peri-urban area of a town with 219.174 inhabitants, and the other one is semi-private school located in the centre of a town with 960.111. Data were produced through participant observation, informal conversations, semi-structured interviews, from the reading of policy documents and by virtual interaction. The interaction between researchers and research subjects was and is a common practice during the research process. Ethnography as explanatory critique has been the method we have used. It involves exploring the co-incidences that materialize within the empirical reality of education by getting up close to sites of learning through participant observation and investigating how they are lived, experienced, challenged, and changed from within by subjects themselves (Maisuria and Beach 2017).

Educational relations, experiences and understanding are formed in specific spatial and temporal contexts. The first analysis shows consistencies but there are differences too. Consistencies seem to be linked to the social and economic conditions and limitations of the population. The tendency to differentiate between ‘us’ and ‘the others’ is present in both schools, through special programs to respond to cultural diversity, and comments such as ‘they are not as we are’. Differences are so far by considering how the ways to respond to the cultural diversity are changing during the research process are related to the changes during the research process. The school located in a deprived social, cultural and economic environment show changes during the process of participant observation and through informal conversations. Teachers are aware of that school is offering a culture that does not belong the children’ and they recognise that ‘school’ need to know and incorporate the cultural diversity in order that families and children lose the fear of school and to closer the school to them. They are recognising the life and the experiences of children outside the school through the teaching practices, doing of that a project of the school. The process of transformation of the production relations within the research project. In the school located in the centre of a big town, headteacher and teachers silence the ‘cultural diversity’, they highlight the academic results and insist on the possibilities of the ‘new methodologies’ to work in the classroom in another way. In the paper we will therefore try to conceptualize and analyse the processes that took place in the different schools.

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