Backyard ethnography: researching the interplay between education policy and teaching practices in a complex workplace

This study focuses on researching the connections between policy and teaching practices. In the context of English Further Education (FE), it describes how an ethnographic approach was used to examine how teachers navigate policy directives in their day-to-day work. Focusing particularly on quality improvement (QI) directives, it shows how two linked theoretical perspectives can be used to collect and analyse data: on one hand, complexity theory is used to identify and describe a genuinely complex environment, workplace culture and the relevance of ethnography in investigating such environments; on the other hand, analysis drawing on Michel Foucault’s approach to discourse is used to investigate this complexity, focussing on policy and its impact on practitioners and their own ideas about practice. Conducted as an ethnographic case study of one college, we show how, as critical researchers, one can challenge assumptions in policies as well as one’s own beliefs about quality, education and power.

Using classroom observations, interviews and policy analysis to provide a rich, triangulated data set, we show how ethical standards were met when dealing with potentially sensitive data collection techniques. We show how such research methods can be used in valid, rigorous ways and provide theoretical insights into complex systems. This approach also provides a framework for researching the interplay between policies and practices in contexts beyond education.