I: Observations are contextualized, both in the immediate setting in which behavior is observed and in further contexts beyond that context, as relevant.

II: Hypotheses emerge in situ, as the study goes on in the setting selected for observation. Judgement on what may be significant to study in depth is deferred until the orienting phase of the field study has been completed.

III: Observation is prolonged and repetitive. Chains of events are observed more than once to establish the reliability of observations.

IV: The native view of reality is attended through inferences from observation and through the various forms of ethnographic inquiry (including interviews and other eliciting procedures).

V: Sociocultural knowledge held by social participants makes social behavior and communication sensible. Therefore, a major part of the ethnographic task is to elicit that knowledge from informant-participants in as systematic a fashion as possible.

VI: Instruments, codes, schedules, questionnaires, agenda for interviews and so forth must be generated in situ as a result of observation and ethnographic inquiry.

VII: A transcultural, comparative perspective is present, though frequently as an unstated assumption. That is, cultural variation over time and space is considered a natural human condition. All cultures are seen as adaptations to the exigencies of human life and exhibit common as well as distinguishing features.

VIII: Some of the sociocultural knowledge affecting behavior and communication in any particular setting being studied is implicit or tacit, not known to all participants and known only ambiguously to some. A significant task of ethnography is therefore to make what is implicit and tacit to informants, explicit.

IX: Since the informant (any person being interviewed) is one who knows and who has the emic, native cultural knowledge, the ethnographic interviewer must not predetermine responses by the kinds of questions asked. The management of the interview must be carried out so as to promote the unfolding of emic cultural knowledge in its most heuristic, "natural" form.

X: Any form of technical device that will enable the ethnographer to collect more live data – immediate, natural, detailed behavior – may be used, such as cameras, audio-tapes, videotapes, and field-based instruments.

Relevant works by the Spindlers include:

Doing the ethnography of schooling: Educational anthropology in action (George Spindler, ed. 1982, Holt Rinehart)

Education and cultural process: Anthropological approaches (George Spindler, ed. 1987, Waveland)

Interpretive ethnography of education at home and abroad (George & Louise Spindler, eds. 1987, L. Erlbaum)