Organizational Ethnography as a Qualitative Approach in Educational Administration: A study in methodology

        The current study is based in its objectives on exploring the theoretical and intellectual premises of organizational ethnography as one of the qualitative approaches, which focuses on addressing issues within its institutional, cultural context in various educational, community and other institutions, in addition to identifying its steps and applications in educational administration.
       The study is based in its justifications on the increasing trend towards a multiplicity of research methods and interest in diversifying approaches between quantity and quality, such as ethnography in general and organizational ethnography, which is characterized by the ability to reveal organizational interactions that govern individuals and groups behavior, and to describe and analyze the cultural and social factor affecting the pattern of practices and the quality of prevailing processes , which requires seeking to benefit from these approaches and their multiple tools in developing research treatments by giving chances for the voice of respondents in the field under study based on observation tools of all kinds, in-depth interviews, and document analysis.
       In its treatment, the study relied on the descriptive method, and among its findings that reached: that in spite of the trend and frequency of using qualitative research methods, such as organizational ethnography in foreign educational studies, its exploitation is little in Arabic studies of educational administration.. The study also ended with directions for the systematic employment of organizational ethnography in educational administration as a discipline that is open in nature to benefit from all scientific and methodological developments in many fields of social and human sciences, and in a way that may contribute to a qualitative shift in the in-depth treatment of many administrative problems and issues, and in a manner that supports bridging the gap between theory and practice, treating phenomena based on status quo and its cultural contexts, revealing its latent interactions and analyzing its implications.