ABSTRACT

Although ethnography was new to many educational researchers in the early 1980s, it has a long history. Literally "a picture of the people," ethnography is the study of culture. 1t offers a holistic theoretical perspective from which to view education, an array of accessible research tools, and a narrative genre for research reporting. Shirley Brice Heath instructed educational researchers that an understanding of ethnography "depends on linking it to its traditional disciplinary base in anthropology and its role in the anthropologist's study of human behavior in cross-cultural perspective" (1982, p. 33). Heath's comment underscores the disciplinary roots of ethnography in studies of culture and the importance of comparison and contrast across cultures as a part of such study.