“…Education and its concomitant process, learning, are co-constructed and messy phenomena, with complex interactions in play amongst the three chief components of educational practicenamely, the learners, teachers, and curriculum. Ethnography has proved a valuable methodology for negotiating the messiness of compulsory education (Putney & Frank, 2008;Holland, Gordon, & Lahelma, 2007;Gustafson, 2009;Robinson, 2008), although it has featured considerably less in higher education research (Pabain, 2014;Cousin, 2009). The 'methodological orientation' of ethnography enables the researcher to experience the context and people under study at first hand, and not become reliant solely on spoken accounts of experience in focus groups or interviews (Hammersley, 2006:4).…”