This paper is based on two research projects. One considered ‘unsettling’ Aboriginal prisoner education and the other ‘troubling’ education in high school. Juxtaposed are two critical research methodologies; critical ethnography and a relational critical allied methodology. Whilst these may at first appear very similar, on closer scrutiny it becomes clearer that independently, the place of the researcher becomes situated in a somewhat different relationship with participants. In working through these layers of difference, what emerges are the entwined voices of participants who are clearly telling us what ‘bars hold them in their cages’ and what spaces between could be transformational
