Review: Peter Cloos & Werner Thole (Eds.) (2006). Ethnografische Zugänge. Professions- und adressatInnenbezogene Forschung im Kontext von Pädagogik [Ethnographic Approaches. Research on Professions and Adressees the Context of Educational Science]

This collected edition includes contributions to "Educational Research in the Context of Ethnography and Biography," which arise from research workshops at the University of Kassel, Germany. In putting together this review of 14 articles the editors' purpose was first to demonstrate the variety of ethnographic approaches to educational research, and second to contribute to the methodological debate about ethnography in educational science by reflecting the methods of the different research activities. Unfortunately the individual articles are highly disparate and have sometimes only a vague relationship to ethnography or education. The editors fail to systematically demarcate topics or make use of the fruits of this heterogeneity, so the compilation falls short of what it might have achieved. In spite of some very interesting and innovative individual articles the book on the whole suggests an arbitrary use of the term "ethnography." URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs08029