In the 2010-2011 academic year, I conducted an ethnographic case study of a Ukrainian university in a predominantly Russian-speaking city that was beginning to teach subjects in English. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship among these three languages and additional foreign languages in the university, as well as the…

Philosophical assumptions about identity, being and belonging have, as is well known, historically been bound together, with their classical nexus being Plato's Socrates, who, because of this, figures as the first philosopher of the city. Especially during moments of crisis, as Socrates' life and death testify, the impulse, both philosophically…

This account of practice charts one organisation development practitioner's experience of the influence of action learning (AL) at various points in his career, from the early 1970s to the present day. It explores the impact of AL upon his practice over the years, chronicling various episodes which had strongest impact. It contrasts AL as it was…

As an Ilokano language teacher at the university and secondary level, Julius Soria has made it a practice to survey his Ilokano students on their reasons for taking his course to get an indication of the students' language history background and ideas for ongoing curricular innovation in heritage language teaching. His students' responses inspired…

This article examines how past memories can shape how we see the present and future in the context of teacher education and professional development. Using qualitative inquiry, drawing in particular on self-study and memory-work, I explore the ways in which critical autoethnography can serve as a tool for personal and professional growth in the…

The present study is an investigation of a daily activity centre (DA). The overall aim was to build a grounded theory that could explain why this particular DA deviated from the norms of Swedish group homes and DAs described in previous studies. These studies have suggested that the staff stuck to old routines, such as letting the participants…

In this article we show how a hybridisation of elite sport and school in lower-secondary education in Denmark produces a particular kind of learning subject with dual tracks for development, and we ask what kind of actions the students apply in order to stay becoming along both tracks. We apply theoretical conceptions of 'becoming' inspired by…

This papers deals in a polemical fashion with what is arguably one of the most contentious issues in education--the disengagement of increasing numbers of young people from schooling. It makes the argument that what is occurring is that global forces are conspiring to position young people as a form of "social waste" and that allowing…

This paper invokes the voices of young people who had been separated from mainstream schooling because they were positioned as "disengaged" and "at risk of failing". The authors argue that streaming students out of schooling needs serious questioning as an escalating number of young people are framed as non-performers within a…

This article reports of an ethnographic study conducted in two academic research centers. The article is centrally directed at the role of digital technologies and devices in contemporary academic work, and more particularly at the role of the screen in the daily composition of this work. Three central questions are raised. First, which positional…

This paper provides a critical analysis of the edu-businesses currently working in partnership with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to deliver the Commonwealth government policy initiative of the National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). These emerging public--private partnerships (PPPs) exemplify…

Drawing from a two-year ethnographic study, this article establishes jazz as an epistemological metaphor for critical participatory action research. The author juxtaposes the tensions inherent in jazz music and critical participatory research methodologies to provide a framework for understanding how dissonance can become a productive element for…

In this article, four critical ethnographers reflect on dilemmas that arose during individual research projects. We grappled with the question: What does critical ethnography require from us as we work to represent stories that emerge in contexts where students and/or teachers have been marginalized? After engaging in a three-year process of…

Current perspectives on young children's use of digital technology suggest that preschool teachers need to provide more effective guidance for children. There is still little research, however, to inform how guidance might be understood and practiced during interactions with digital technology. This article employs an ethnomethodological…

The aim of this article is to investigate how new materialist philosophies of matter can help us study the emergence of scientific thought in young children's activities. We draw extensively on the work of Gilles Deleuze to help us understand scientific concepts as concrete universals. In particular, we show how the concept of force is re-animated…