ABSTRACT
The origins of the Special Issue stem from a symposium presented in the European Conference on educational Research in Porto. The intentions behind the symposium—and now of this Special Issue – were to offer a forum to investigate the potentials and limitations of the methods employed by those currently engaged in meta-ethnographic analysis, and to understand why they are relatively underused in educational research. Meta-ethnography is distinguished from other forms of qualitative meta-analysis and qualitative synthesis because it allows the study of interconnectedness, as conducted through a process that remains consistent with the interpretative nature of qualitative research. Emphasising the significance of the in-depth knowledge conveyed by the original studies, in their meta-ethnographic analysis, they enquire whether meta-ethnography is a study in its own right as G. W. Noblit and R. D. Hare suggest, or if it should rather be considered as a systematic elaboration and further exploration of a primary ethnographic research topic.
