Democratic challenges in education and social systems in times of significant global political change: Ethnographic challenges and ways of responding

We live in particularly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times, which produce and confront us with particularly entangled phenomena difficult to understand and transform. Contemporary realities are made up of diverse and deeply intricate networks, arduous to understand and which place us on the verge of “ontological reductionism”. In this context, Ethnography –which we can consider as “the recording and analysis of a culture or society, usually based on participant-observation and resulting in a written account of a people, place or institution” (Simpson & Coleman 2017)– seems a privileged research perspective, although not exempt from challenges and difficulties, particularly in the field of education. Hence the interest of the round table:

Democratic challenges in education and social systems in times of significant global political change: Ethnographic challenges and ways of responding

Participants

• Dennis Beach. University of Gothenburg and University of Borås, Sweden.
• Fernando Hernández Hernández. Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.
• Sofia Marques de Silva. University of Porto, Portugal.
• Christoph Maeder. University of Teacher Education Zürich, Switzerland.
• Juana M. Sancho Gil. Universi de Barcelona, Spain.
• Begoña Vigo Arrazola. University of Zaragoza, Spain.

This activity, organized as part of the Ethnography Unbound: Responding to Late Modernity’s Mobilities and Challenges, sponsored by the European Educational Research Association, is aimed at the academic community, research policy-makers and teachers interested in unveiling the complexity of social and educational phenomena. And in particular, to young people who are just starting out in the field of research.