This study examines how tolerance is enacted in Indonesian primary classrooms through an ethnographic approach. Conducted over six months across seven schools, the study draws on classroom observations and interviews with teachers, students, school leaders, and parents. The findings show that participation in classroom dialogue is uneven, shaped by confidence, recognition, and social positioning. Although students express support for tolerance, engagement across difference is often mediated by familiarity, trust, and existing relationships. Experiences beyond school, including family, community, and digital environments, further influence these interactions. Collaborative activities such as group work and gotong royong reveal forms of civic participation that extend beyond classroom talk, making citizenship visible through cooperation and shared responsibility. The study argues that tolerance and citizenship are relational practices negotiated through everyday interaction rather than outcomes of diversity exposure alone.
This paper proposes a reflection on the role of educational ethnography in understanding school change from a collaborative perspective. All research entails a political, ideological and ethical stance, as well as an onto-methodological and methodological positioning. It thus implies a future-oriented project that engages in collective transformation processes. Research, therefore, involves progressing in the complexity of knowledge processes aimed at transforming the realities investigated. We present an ethnography on disruptive practices and nomadic knowledge. This ethnographies supported change projects in the curricular and/or methodological orientations of the schools. The ethnography were accompanied by narrative and collaborative research processes. The results allow us to reflect on the possibilities of the collaborative perspective in ethnographic research, enabling it to be part of the transformation process. In the same way, ethnography allows us to reconstruct the narrative of educational processes, questioning hegemonic logics and advancing toward new ways of acting by all those involved.
