Delane Bender-Slack takes on the important subject of teaching for social justice. Her article's strength is in its uncompromising look at complex, often misinterpreted teaching challenges. This article focuses on actual teachers working for social justice in their classrooms. Working from a strong theoretical framework, she pushes us in new…

This article describes the results of a six-month ethnographic case study of a French immigrant of Senegalese descent and how he recreates the culture of an American company's speech community. Data were collected through interviews, field notes, and shadowing the participant at his place of employment. The transcribed interviews and field notes…

This article focuses on the author's applied anthropological work with the Ingham County Health Department between 1998 and 2001. Government administrators were reflexively aware that nobody had ever stepped back to assess the area's overall environmental health and rank the issues according to some criteria, such as by the "most urgent…

The evolution of Rwanda's language policies since 1996 has played and continues to play a critical role in social reconstruction following war and genocide. Rwanda's new English language policy aims to drop French and install English as the only language of instruction. The policy-makers frame the change as a major factor in the success of social…

After 2 years of progress, the literacy initiative at Donaldson Elementary faces challenges because of a disagreement between Principal Joanna Jackson and Literacy Coordinator Loretta Sullivan over whether Sullivan's role should include evaluative classroom observations and whether teachers should be mandated to receive coaching. The case is…

The Answers in Genesis Creation Museum opened in May of 2007. During the opening day, a loosely affiliated group of scientists joined in a Rally for Reason as they termed it to protest the museum's potential effect on science in the United States. This paper discusses ethnographic data collected before and during the rally. Scientist narratives…

This second paper commences where Part 1 concluded in volume 33, number 1, 2006. The paper describes the relations reflected in the Model-of-Knowledge between all partners of the intergenerational encounters at school--children, old adults, and teachers. The Model-of-Knowledge represents a relatively balanced approach toward the generations'…

This critical policy examination of the economistic discourses that control Texas's accountability reforms explores how over the last three decades Texas business elite utilized the policy process, power relationships, and educational value conflicts that promote accountability as the paradigm for education reform. Attention on "who gets…

Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), mystic, writer, theologian, poet, and musician lived the majority of her life in an incredibly cloistered setting. She was often very ill, and had little formal education (even by the standard of the day), yet she composed music, lyrics and poetry. She described (dictated) exquisite visions in language which…

This article examines how particular dynamics of globalization, including pressures to restructure economies for informational labor, shape and are shaped by processes of public schooling and the development of diverse literacies (understood here as the control of certain forms of life). More specifically, this article analyzes how, in an era of…

Administrative power for some school teachers can be an aphrodisiac that can be applied negatively, especially when a leader has devastating instinct for the weaknesses of others. A leader's intellect and heart closes shop and ceases to function when drunk on power. In this article, the author describes how the use of administrative power can be…

This article presents the author's address for the International Writing Centers Association Conference in Las Vegas. The author's argument in this talk stresses the importance of paying attention to the conceptual frames writing tutors use to understand the world, their work, and the impact of their work on the world, and this attentiveness to…

This article compares public and community schools in Salvador, the state capital of Bahia, Brazil. Based on quantitative data analysis and qualitative research conducted on-site during three research trips in 2001, 2003 and 2005, the author finds that Brazil's extreme inequality and the associated concentration of state power in a few hands stand…

This article explores the construction of a bilingual professional identity in a bilingual creative-writing graduate program in southwest Texas by analyzing a classroom event and the participants' interpretation of it. In bilingual classrooms the resources available to construct professional identities include a large repertoire of linguistic…

This study purports to document, analyze, and interpret the learning that occurred across two university literacy courses in which faculty implemented a constructivist, critical literacy pedagogy. Findings explore what it means to share power in the classroom and the relationships between critical teaching and developing a literacy theory of…