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No Entry Signs: educational change and some problems encountered in negotiating entry to educational settings
Author(s) -
Troman Geoff
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1080/0141192960220105
Subject(s) - reflexivity , ethnography , negotiation , argument (complex analysis) , context (archaeology) , sociology , order (exchange) , macro , process (computing) , public relations , educational research , pedagogy , political science , social science , business , computer science , medicine , paleontology , finance , anthropology , biology , programming language , operating system
The difficulties involved in gaining entry to educational settings in order to carry out ethnographic fieldwork have been known for some time. Previous accounts, however, have stressed the importance of the researcher's self and field relations in the micro‐context in influencing the entry process. This article argues that in a time of rapid change in education the impact of the recent changes on participants, in particular, gatekeepers, shapes their responses to access requests from ethnographers. This argument is developed using data derived from the author's unsuccessful attempts to gain entry for ethnographic research in several English primary schools. The article concludes by suggesting that getting in is getting harder, and ethnographers, in developing successful strategies to gain entry, must develop a reflexivity informed by knowledge of structure and the macro‐context in which their negotiations take place.