Why is school an important site for ethnographic research?

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Andrea Renee Leone Pizzighella

23 January 2023

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Why is school an important site for ethnographic research?

Woman standing in a classroom - © pexels.com

Schools are often seen as natural parts of everyday life. However, they are saturated with cultural peculiarities, social rituals, and locally specific linguistic displays which provide rich data points for ethnographic research.

Andrea Renee Leone Pizzighella

Andrea Leone-Pizzighella is a language teacher-turned-researcher working on better understanding how school works. An educational linguist by training, her research in secondary schools sits at the nexus of linguistics, anthropology, and education sciences. Her current project as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow is a participatory action research project at two middle schools in Northern Italy.