Since its creation in 2003, the Passerelles association has set up practical ethnological workshops in primary and secondary schools. These workshops aim at acquainting pupils with empirical approach – with a particular emphasis on how to look at their immediate everyday environment from a critical and distanciated vantage point. Here is presented our experience with the workshops, the ways in which we have tried to experiment with the tools and specifities characteristic of our field, as well as the implications of such a point of view, both in the eyes of the anthropologist and those of the teachers and their pupils. Under which conditions can research be conducted in an educational background, assessing its proprieties, pertinence and the potential benefits it may yield ?