Chapter 9 Ethnography and Education Policy. A Critical Analysis of Normalcy and Difference in Schools

Abstract This chapter argues that the production of ethnographies can be a critical source for informing policy design on issues of diversity and inclusion. Ethnography from a postrepresentational perspective and the implications for the ways we conceptualize and represent issues of difference in school contexts and policy-making are explored. In making sense of the possibilities ethnographic research practices afford for informing policy design, the chapter engages in the exploration of new ways of thinking and researching inequalities, and the possibilities of change and transformation they might bring. I contend that the regulation of subjectivities through specific meanings of normalcy and difference leaves no opening for an active politics. This chapter intends to advance on more creative ways to achieve social transformation.