Choosing not choosing: the indirections of ethnography and educational research

Abstract

This paper argues for the importance of ethnography in the conduct of educational research and the ways in which it can threaten, in a good sense, the certainties and dominance of performativity. The paper uses the poetry of Emily Dickinson to signal the importance of indirection in the conduct of ethnographic work and, more specifically, the ways in which she ‘chooses not to choose’ in her work. Her work is used to illustrate the complexities of meaning in what we see and hear in the conduct of research, the impossibility of mapping (in any ultimate sense) experience and identity and the indeterminacy we need to ‘hold’ in the stories we tell. The intention of the paper is to underline our necessary obsession with language in the processes of educational inquiry. The paper deliberately tries to echo its ‘message’ in refusing to ‘spell things out’ too closely for the reader.

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