This essay is a history of the process of completing an ethnographic study in a child care setting. It presents reflections on entering the field site, keeping field notes, and analyzing data. An exploratory study of a group of preschool children led to the selection of qualitative methods and clarified the theoretical basis for research. In…

Basic qualitative research was conducted in classrooms of two teachers in order to examine the nature of their enacted curriculum. Hidden curriculum was investigated as one component of the enacted curriculum in the two classrooms. One teacher taught a regular first grade class, and the other taught a class of developmentally handicapped children…

The "emic" research method used in cultural anthropology is described and its usefulness in developmental psychology is illustrated. A distinction is made in cultural anthropology between "etic" and "emic" research methods. In etic research observers employ established categories, such as prior definitions of…

Article defines qualitative research and describes the form that an article based on qualitative research might take. Encourages readers to submit articles based on qualitative research to the American Educational Research Journal. (RB)

Uses three specific studies to analyze methods of data collection from children, including participant observation, focus groups, interviews, and structured activities. Points out the effective and ineffective aspects of each method, and deals with methodological issues such as parental consent, access to children, privacy, and confidentiality.…

This study examined issues in supporting middle school teachers to become more learner centered when implementing computer-based, workplace simulations in their classrooms. Focuses on a participant observation study of two teachers to develop and evolve a framework for professional development that included reflective skills and proximal goals.…

Dance is often positioned in contrast to more "academic" disciplines. Its marginalized status in pre-collegiate education means that it is too often absent from schooling. When taught at all, it is often used for the purpose of increasing student engagement or advancing understanding in another subject. In such a role, the standards, concepts, and…

The paper explores gender relations in academia and discusses how gender is constructed within academic institutions. It is based upon the study of a business school, part of a British university. The construction of gender relations within this institution was of special interest because the majority of managerial roles were occupied by women.…

This paper reports the findings of a pilot study which adopted an ethnographic approach to investigate the cultural features of the Chinese kindergarten curriculum by means of "semi-participant" observations, semi-structured interviews, daily conversations and open-ended questionnaires in two Chinese kindergartens. The paper first…

The authors conducted an ethnography investigating children's lived experiences in a 3-day residential environmental education (EE) program with 20 gifted 4th- and 5th-grade students. The authors also conducted participant observation and a series of interviews before, during, and after the trip. After the authors conducted the interviews and…

Teachers have begun using student response systems (SRSs) in an effort to enhance the learning process in higher education courses. Research providing detailed information about how interactive technologies affect students as they learn is crucial for professors who seek to improve teaching quality, attendance rates and student learning. This…

Language shift is the process by which a speech community in a contact situation (i.e. consisting of bilingual speakers) gradually stops using one of its two languages in favor of the other. The causal factors of language shift are generally considered to be social, and researchers have focused on speakers' attitudes (both explicit and unstated)…

This article examines how Chicana/o and Latina/o youth employed their political-historical knowledge to "talk back" to the xenophobia and political contradictions that underlie the (im)migration "debate." A literacy unit that honed bilingual students' everyday translating created opportunities for students to utilize this political-historical…

This paper describes an innovative pilot project at the University of Canberra aimed at providing pre-service early childhood teachers with the skills, confidence and ideological change required to include technology-enhanced learning as part of the early childhood curriculum. The impact of the project was evaluated through participant…

A year-and-a-half of ethnographic fieldwork in a primarily African-American neighborhood suggests that praxis and ethnographic methods can be stirred together to produce empowering literacy artifacts and discourse in the community. Originally a Marxist notion, praxis requires researchers to understand how people characterize their own situations…