ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the main tenets of institutional ethnography (IE) and how adopting this approach allowed us to analyse the pressures present within the school site and beyond. IE is immersive, focused on the everyday and the problematics embedded in everyday experience. Furthermore, as a critical method of inquiry, IE foregrounds the tensions present in the institution by tracing discourses, texts and action foster certain conditions. Our study seeks to draw data from multiple standpoints to improve our understanding of how these moments of tension are experienced differently depending on where participants are located within the survival school.
