The role of an ethnographer in a school is complex and engaging in ethnography ethically requires reflexivity and positional awareness. The researcher holds power in many ways, but when it comes to access to the field school, it needs to be sensitively negotiated and should not be taken for granted (see e.g. Atkinson, Coffey & Delamont 2003). This presentation explores a methodological challenge of what are the frames given to long-term critical ethnographic fieldwork and knowledge production today and what is the position of a researcher in the changing landscape of research, where most of the research is expected to be fast-paced and controlled projects. Our interest in the methodological challenge discussed in this presentation was sparked by an episode in 2018 when we were negotiating access to one of our field schools. The new European general data protection regulation (GDPR) had just been implemented and due to that the municipal office granting research permissions to educational institutions asked us to fill out a form where we should write down “everything we were possibly planning to observe at the field school”. The official negotiations related to access seem to have become more regulated and restrictive and seem somewhat incompatible with the ethical questions related to ethnographic research and the nature of critical knowledge production.

To analyse the multi-layered dynamics of negotiating access to the everyday life of the ethnographic field schools and producing critical ethnographic research we use Gordon, Holland and Lahelma’s (2000, p. 53) three levels of schooling: the official school, the informal school, and the physical school and consider how access is negotiated on all three intersecting levels. The official school consists, for example, the documented research permissions whereas the informal level of the school captures the everyday negotiations of access when we for example asked if we can attend certain classes. The physical school covers possibilities and limitations offered by the school building considering also limitations set to moving, talking and being at the school.

In this presentation, we draw from two ethnographic studies focusing on questions of educational choices and the societal inclusion of young people in general upper secondary education in the Helsinki metropolitan area. We have produced ethnographic data in two general upper secondary schools during the years 2016–2020. Our approach to the field in this study was inspired by multi-sited ethnography (Lahelma et al., 2014). By multi-sited, we mean that we understand the ethnographic field as layered, that it stretches from a certain time and institution towards the wider societal context of the research (Marcus, 1995). The data produced in separate ethnographic studies were analysed jointly. During the fieldwork, we participated in and observed the everyday life of the schools, school events, meetings and lessons for all age groups. Our broad interest was in making sense of what happens in the schools’ everyday life and how people make sense of it. We focused especially on the messy everyday discrepancies between saying and doing. As for qualitative ethnographic analysis (e.g. Coffey & Atkinson, 1996), the data was coded thematically and then analysed in a dialogue with the theoretical concept of three levels of schooling (Gordon et. al., 2000). We also used elements of discourse analysis (Bacchi, 2000) focusing on how certain discourses limit or allow access.

The preliminary results of our analysis illustrate how the negotiations related to access to the level of official school were just a starting point to negotiating our access to the everyday life of the schools. The most important negotiations seemed to happen on the unofficial level when communicating with the students and the teachers in situations like asking permission to follow a certain lesson or to participate in different activities at the school. Access to the ethnographic field is never fixed but constantly re-negotiated (see Lappalainen et. al., 2007). In the everyday life of schools, there are certain hierarchies and roles, such as teacher and student, but no ready-made position for a researcher. Spending time with both students and teachers illustrated the ambivalence of our position as we often had access to both spaces used by only teachers and spaces used by only students. (see Gordon, Holland, Lahelma & Tolonen, 2005.) However, as we were not students nor did we have keys to the school, like the teachers had, we always needed to negotiate our access also at the level of a physical school (Gordon et al., 2000). As the negotiations happen simultaneously on many different levels the official regulations related to research permissions seem to fail to recognise them: official research permissions for example only cover the official school area, but boundaries of the ethnographic field are not strictly bound to the school building itself and the position of a researcher does not disappear when encountering people from the field school at the nearby bus stop.

Atkinson, P., Coffey, A., & Delamont, S. (2003). Key themes in qualitative research: Continuities and changes. Rowman Altamira. Gordon, T., Holland, J., & Lahelma, E. (2000). Making spaces: Citizenship and difference in schools. Springer. Gordon, T., Holland, J., Lahelma, E., & Tolonen, T. (2005). Gazing with intent: ethnographic practice in classrooms. Qualitative Research, 5(1), 113-131. Lahelma, E., Lappalainen, S., Mietola, R., & Palmu, T. (2014). Discussions that ‘tickle our brains’: Constructing interpretations through multiple ethnographic data-sets. Ethnography and Education, 9(1), 51-65. Lappalainen, S., Hynninen, P., Kankkunen, T., Lahelma, E., & Tolonen, T. (2007). Etnografia metodologiana: lähtökohtana koulutuksen tutkimus. [Ethnography as a methodology: researching education] Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual review of anthropology, 24(1), 95-117.