No Entry Signs: educational change and some problems encountered in negotiating entry to educational settings

Abstract

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.