Researching Teachers Working with Young Adolescents: Implications for Ethnographic Research

Ethnography has the capacity to interrogate and unravel what Geertz called "webs of significance" in respect of difficult and perplexing cultural issues. One arena that is especially troubling at the moment lies in the need to pose questions and explore more robust explanations as to how it is that some teachers of young adolescents seem to be able to reinvent themselves in ways that make a difference for this group of students. These are teachers who are working against the tide. What this paper does is provide some background urgency to the issue, asks questions about the efficacy of ethnography, and suggests some worthy next ethnographic steps in understanding an important and intractable imponderable.