Critical ethnography in schools: reflections on power, positionality, and privilege

Abstract

This paper is a critical reflection of a critical ethnography, a study focused on how ‘healthy lifestyle education’ programmes were implemented and experienced in two primary schools. In an attempt to disrupt the status quo I employed a range of ethnographic methods: ‘hanging out’ with children and adults; building trusting relationships; having research conversations with participants; observing children and adults; and, journaling. However, the messy assemblage of diverse organisations, people, relations of power, discourses, truths, and practices, resulted in the emergence of ethical and methodological conundrums, including how to represent children’s voices, whether (or not) to ‘intervene’ during problematic pedagogical moments, and how to ‘act’ as a critical ethnographic researcher in schools. Applying a critical lens to my own methodology helped to ensure that I embarked on a continuous, reflexive process; one that enabled a critique of research methods and a negotiation of issues of power, positionality, and privilege.

Keywords:

• Critical ethnography
• Foucault
• primary schools
• corporations
• methods
• power

Notes

1 All names of schools and people are pseudonyms. Further details about these schools can be found in Powell (2015, 2020).

2 In Aotearoa/New Zealand, Pākehā is a common Māori word to describe immigrants of European decent. Māori are the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand.

3 moveMprove was a ‘fundamental movement pattern’ programme devised by GymSports New Zealand, the national body for ‘gymsports’ (i.e. gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, trampolining). It was implemented at both St Saviour’s and Dudley School over six sessions by coaches from a local gymnastic club—coaches who had received training and accreditation from GymSports New Zealand.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Darren Powell

Formerly a primary school teacher, Darren Powell is a senior lecturer of health education in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research focuses on the ‘childhood obesity epidemic’ and the ways in which corporations (especially those of the food and drink industry) and charities are now re-inventing themselves as ‘part of the solution’. Darren is a recipient of a Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund Fast-Start Grant to conduct a research project about the impact of marketing ‘health’ to children.