Given the vast array of reforms that are at play in and transforming the landscape of education, how can ethnographers contribute to more insightful analyses of the interplay of inequality, poverty, and educational experiences and outcomes, particularly with economic disparities growing in our current era? How might ethnographers continue to challenge problematic and pathologizing assumptions to provide more powerful explanations of the influence of poverty and racialized class inequality on education?

At a time dominated by high stakes testing and increased surveillance in educational settings, ethnographers have an ever-increasing role to play in reframing dominant discourses of accountability in policy and practice conversations. A primary purpose of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Urban Ethnography (CUE) from its founding in 1970, and of the Ethnography in Education Research Forum since its beginnings in 1980, has been to encourage and support field research applying anthropological, folkloristic and linguistic skills to the study of American cities, with priority given to the study of ethnic groups in Philadelphia. An early CUE research effort was an ethnographic project in Philadelphia public schools directed toward collaborative monitoring of the effects and consequences of programs and policies in terms of countering educational inequities and advancing social justice.

In keeping with this research tradition, and in today’s transformed educational landscape, the 36th Ethnography Forum invites exploration of methodological alternatives and modes of collaboration in ethnographic research on education. How do proposals such as ethnographic monitoring, practitioner inquiry, decolonizing methodologies, culturally responsive methodologies, and other participatory ethnographic approaches invite, value and respect the teachers, learners, schools and communities we work with? How might ethnographers invite deeper engagement and self-reflection by all of us as we work to create more socially just educational policies and practices?

For more information about the Ethnography in Education Forum, visit http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cue/forum or email cue@gse.upenn.edu.

For proposal submission, visit http://www.conftool.com/forum2015/. The proposal deadline is October 1, 2014.

See proposal guidelines on the attached file [Only on MyUMBC Groups]