This dissertation examines the personal transformation of an American teacher as she becomes aware of the social, political, and economic tensions that exist within the American school system and the affects these tensions have on her ability to teach. As the researcher becomes more aware of power structures surrounding her, the reader is enabled…

In studies ranging from oracular practices and court proceedings to alternative philosophies, reality disjunctures, and a family's work in maintaining the normality of a severely retarded child, Mel Pollner put together something like a cabinet of curiosities exhibiting the social character of reasoning's worldly enterprises. At the same time, he…

In their essay "Failures of meaning in religious education", James Conroy, David Lundie, and Vivienne Baumfield report findings from their recent project "Does Religious Education Work?", during which ethnographic studies in 24 British schools were conducted. In this response I first highlight the importance of the character of…

This article examines how four urban elementary teachers designed their literacy instruction in ways that sought to sustain students' cultural competence--maintaining their language and cultural practices while also gaining access to more dominant ones--amid expectations to prepare students for high-stakes testing. A large part of their teaching…

Social scientists have begun to document the stratifying effects of over a decade of unprecedented charter growth in urban districts. An exodus of students from traditional neighborhood schools to charter schools has attended this growth, creating troubling numbers of vacant seats in neighborhood schools as well as concentrating larger percentages…

This paper is based on an ethnographic study conducted between 2012 and 2014 with a group of 64 boys and girls aged 6-10, all attending the same township primary school in South Africa. The paper explores how the young children construct gender "boundaries" and "police" gender "transgressions" on the school playground…

This paper presents results from an ethnographic study of language policy as it is enacted in everyday interaction in two language profile preschools in Sweden with explicit monolingual language policies: English and Finnish, respectively. However, in both preschools, children are free to choose language or code alternate. The study shows how…

This article explores dilemmatic aspects of language policies in a preschool group in which three languages (Swedish, Romani and Arabic) are spoken on an everyday basis. The article highlights the interplay between policy decisions on the societal level, the teachers' interpretations of these policies, as well as language practices on the micro…

This narrative inquiry study uses personal experiences as a method of ethnographic research among Black women student leaders. The collegiate life stories of six African American women undergraduates experiencing gendernoir racial battle fatigue are described and analyzed. Combined are participant journaling, lived experiential interviews, and…

El Sistema is a Venezuelan program of social change that has inspired a worldwide movement in music education. El Sistema inspires social transformation and musical excellence to occur simultaneously and symbiotically. This study examines: What does El Sistema look like within the context of a public school partnership in the United States? How do…

In this study, the researchers examined how first-grade students initially positioned as struggling readers took up literacy practices to reposition themselves as capable competent readers and part of a literate community of practice over an academic year. Using positive discourse analysis and case study methodology, the researchers documented and…

Azerbaijani and Turkish are two closely-related languages from Oguz branch of Turkic languages, which are said to be mutually intelligible. Regarding this background, we designed an experiment within the framework of receptive multilingualism to investigate the role of linguistic factors in intelligibility of the Turkish language to Iranian…

Using sociocultural concepts of authoritative and dialogic discourse, I sought to examine 5th-grade teachers' questioning practices during small-group reading instruction to understand the differences between groups reading text on grade level and groups reading texts below grade level. The purpose was also to examine how questions functioned for…

Research indicates that preservice teachers' understandings of how to integrate technology into their classrooms are dependent upon experience in their university methods courses and in their field placements. These findings place a new responsibility on teacher educators for modeling effective integration of technology into methods courses. This…

Through a yearlong, qualitative ethnographic study that incorporated a youth participatory action research project, this research identifies and documents the learning outcomes achieved when core principles of critical pedagogy are brought into practice with urban Latinx youths to develop critical awareness. Analysis reveals three themes around…