Dialogic meta-ethnography: troubling methodology in ethnographically informed qualitative inquiry

Abstract

For those interested in understanding cultures of learning in both formal and informal science educational contexts, ethnography is often the research approach of choice. Yet ethnography, as a research approach, is far from monolithic. The myriad of nuances, distinctions, and open questions of ethnographic research, employed as full-scale ethnographies or as ethnographically informed approaches to broader qualitative research, can be a source of numerous tensions in science education research and educational research in general. In order to trouble and learn from these tensions, we employed a novel, analytic approach of meta-ethnography. We relied on Bakhtinian dialogic analysis to contrast questions of ethnographic methodology and method across four multidisciplinary studies of learning cultures rooted in varied levels of ethnographic methods. Commonalities in methodological tensions between the studies include the role of the researcher, the temporal scope, and analysis and representation. We proposed an ethnographic continuum as one way to envision our ethnographic studies without bounding them by the traditional nomenclatures.