This article reports on a collaborative study using an innovative methodology, based on "insiders" who are Steiner practitioners knowledgeable and practised in Steiner philosophy and "outsiders" from UK mainstream early years and primary perspectives. Although the study as a whole focused on assessment and observation used in…

In this paper, we explore the use of "estrangement" autoethnography as a means to encourage student autonomy and enhance learning. We include a case study of a structured activity requiring estrangement in consumer spaces to challenge student perspectives of normal environments. Our students welcomed the activity as one which changed…

In the literature on the situated and distributed nature of cognition, the coordination of spatial organization and the structure of human practices and relations is accepted as a fact. To date, science educators have yet to build on such research. Drawing on an ethnographic study of high school students during an internship in a scientific…

A major challenge faced in research seeking to investigate the underlying dynamics of problematic interactions is that, when asked about the rationale underpinning what they said and did--their "theory of action in-use" (Argyris and Schön, 1974, 1978, 1996)--participants are often unaware of what prompts their behaviour--or decide to…

The modern workplace is international and multilingual. Both white and blue collar employees are expected to be mobile, work increasingly in (virtual) teams (Gee et al. 1996) and to address complex organisational issues in a language that, often, is not their first language (L1). This results in a number of languages forming the ecosystem of…

This article explores some of the ways in which children's ethnic identities have been conceptualised by sociocultural and critical race theory and the potential of the "figured worlds" literature in helping to theorise the responses of young children to the cultural and educational worlds they encounter. Using some vignettes drawn from…

This article critically examines pupil councils as a means of developing pupils' citizenship participation. It draws on findings across two research projects. The first study is a mixed method study commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) that reviews the range of participatory activities in Scottish schools and their contribution to…

Obesity discourse provides a commonly recycled rationale for multiple, ostensibly well-intended, interventions. Formal educational settings sometimes operate as sites for these biopedagogies which putatively promote "good health" among young people as they transition to "responsible" adulthood. Yet, regulation and control, or…

Few studies explore teachers' involvement in school feeding, questioning gendered implications within a feminine and feminized profession. Ethnographic data from one public high school in Metropolitan Buenos Aires suggest that teachers' efforts to address student hunger added new work roles: food advocates/activists, food managers, and service…

Using collaborative performance ethnography in community- and school-based settings, sex education has the potential to challenge at-risk narratives for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) youth. This paper problematises the youth-led drama project "Epic Queer" to test the "queer" potential of…

This article presents findings from 12 months of ethnographic observations of nonformal adult education classes offered by an internationally funded nonprofit, referred to in this article as Comunidades de Poder (CDP). The primary objective of this article is to examine the various contextual factors that influenced CDP teachers' instruction and…

This study, part of a larger linguistic ethnographic enquiry carried out in two primary school classrooms in Flanders and the Netherlands, sheds light on the perils faced by the ethnographer caught between pupils' inventiveness and his own ethnographic naivety when dealing with these pupils' ethnolinguistic identity construction. The study first…

Jacqueline Cossentino's research looks at the culture of the family as it pertains to four birth-to-six centers: Montessori Partners Serving All Children, in St. Paul, MN, Crossway Montessori Communities in Kensington, MD, East Dallas Community Schools in Dallas, TX, and Family Star Montessori School, in Denver, CO. These programs met for the…

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to examine vernacular music making in higher education. The participants, undergraduate music education majors (N = 23 for Fall, N = 10 for Spring), were investigated throughout the course of the 2012-2013 academic year. A constructivist philosophical framework was applied and data were collected using…

At the hospital, nurses' telephone calls to doctors mostly revolve around obtaining doctors' intervention in a medical case. To achieve this, nurses need to make the doctor's intervention relevant, by explicitly requesting it or, more indirectly, by reporting a medical problem. Two recorded telephone conversations have been selected for analysis…