Ethnography in education is gaining momentum. Over the last 20 years, more and more educational researchers endorse ethnography because of its distinctive qualities and its productivity to comprehend interconnections of educational phenomena, from pedagogical practices to the commodification that takes place through educational policy. Ethnography is commended for its unique approach to educational phenomena through continuous and immediate experience in fieldwork and its unfragmented methodical attention to situations and interactions (Hammersley 2017; Wieser and Pilch Ortega 2020). Even though this understanding of ethnography is agreeable to many, ethnographic research builds on diverse traditions, resulting in a plurality of cultures of doing ethnography (Beach and Larsson 2022). Our panel discussion attends to these cultures of doing ethnography, their histories, similarities, and differences. Consequently, this panel discussion explores the pasts in which local cultures of doing ethnography have emerged, the present contexts in which educational ethnography is developing, and the prospects that ethnography holds for the future. To explore pasts, presents, and futures of educational ethnography, we focus our panel discussion on three sets of questions: 

Foundations of educational ethnography 

What are the ontological and epistemological assumptions on which we build our educational ethnographies? 

What are the implications for core spatial concepts such as “the field” in our contemporary, interconnected and globalized world?

Comprehending educational phenomena through ethnography

How do ethnographic approaches enable us to comprehend the pedagogical character of educational phenomena?

What is the impact of emergent theories such as new materialism, the affective turn, posthumanism, or actor-network theory, on doing ethnographic research in education?

Practices of educational ethnography

What research practices enable us to understand transformations of educational practice?

How do we move forward thinking about ethnography as a collaborative process rather than the work of a sole researcher?

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