ETHNOGRAPHY STRIKES AGAIN! OR THE RHETORIC AND REALITY OF PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATIONS

Abstract

This paper aims at highlighting the potential of ethnography as an investigative methodology which is capable of bridging the gap between rhetoric and reality in education. In order to achieve that, I mention several ethnographic investigations that deal with the school organization, and the groups that work in it; they were developed in the twentieth century and reassure what I have mentioned before. I claim that ethnography must again rank high in the field of Sociology of Education. Specifically, I expose both questions, the heuristic potential and the results of reality, when I refer to new ethnographic studies carried out in three schools in Madrid (Spain), mainly in terms of leadership and their role in the management of culture These educational centers present different levels of pedagogical innovation: there is a private school with author’s pedagogy, a High School where there is no innovation at all, and an Elementary School which has an innovative and eclectic project. Ethnography allows different realities to emerge, disguised in the rhetoric.