Drawing on a year-long qualitative study, this article examines how one refugee student from the Vietnamese Central Highlands negotiated social and cultural constructions of patriotism and citizenship in a Junior Reserves Officer Training Corps (JROTC) class at an urban high school. Data are analyzed using Butler's (1990) the theory of…

One of the primary goals of Freirean theory is the achievement of a higher level of political and social consciousness amongst participants in educational programming. Freire himself only loosely defined this sense of consciousness, and interpretations of how this abstract concept might look vary widely. In some organisations, the politically…

This paper presents a theorised classroom-based account discussing the author's interdisciplinary approach to engaging first-year teacher-education students in self-critical inquiry using creative writing techniques as an entry point into Arts-based three-dimensional storytelling. Via an interpretation of Lacan's "speaking…

Drawing from a larger ethnography of skilled Chinese immigrants' language learning during settlement in Toronto, this article explores the role of informal interactions in facilitating immigrants learning English as a second language and settlement. Examining various activities and networks available at an English-medium multicultural church, this…

Professors play an underexamined role as gatekeepers, and their understandings of merit have significant implications for racial equity and diversity in graduate education and the professoriate. To understand faculty reliance upon admissions criteria that undermine espoused diversity goals, this study examined decision making in 10 highly…

Ethnographic research between 2000 and 2005 in the Business Department of a Further Education (FE) college (College X) was designed to uncover the validity of achievement and success rates as proxy measures for the meeting of New Labour's skills and egalitarian agenda. Whilst the general view of senior managers was that improved success rates…

The extensive empirical research inspired by Piaget and Vygotsky's theories of make-believe play has been criticised for restricting data to Western, urban, middle-class children. We seek to redress this bias by researching the traditional black South African Pedi children's game Masekitlana. Our data relies on embodied memories enacted by Mapelo…

This dissertation explored how identities of students and a teacher in a first grade classroom were co-constructed through various literacy practices and within a third space. Drawing on research that documented the strong connection between literacy and identity and its socio-cultural connections, this qualitative study incorporates ethnographic…

In this interview study involving the analysis of narratives collected from Japanese American professionals teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) who have lived more than ten years in Japan, I focus on how the participants negotiated their often contested identities in the TESOL context in Japan. I use the notion of identity…

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of the role and meaning ofmathematics homework in the lives ofmiddle school students. The study conceptualizes and examines homework as a social practice, with a focus on how students make meaning out of their experiences and the role of identity development in meaning making. Specifically,…

The author of this article, a developmental anthropologist, illustrates how the instructor can use ethnographic films to enhance the study of anthropology and override notions about the scope and efficacy of Western intervention in the Third World, provided the instructor places such films in their proper historical and cultural context. He…

The paper presents a microethnographic examination of an operatic masterclass, based on a transcribed video recording of just one such class. It is a companion piece to a more generalised ethnographic account of such masterclasses as pedagogic events. The detailed analysis demonstrates the close relationship between spoken and unspoken actions in…

This research sought to extend the historical record of advocacy for Black education by exploring the role of Black educators in the decades before the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision. It addressed (a) the ways the educators were involved in advocating for Black schools and (b) the relationship of the activities to the more…

Selecting, gaining access to and attending college (or university) in the United States involve markers of legitimacy and prestige as understood through symbolic capital. An entire complex of fine differentiations operate to distinguish such capital in both students and the institutions they attend. Drawing on works of Bourdieu, this article…

Philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari's figuration of the rhizome describes structures that are non-hierarchical and open-ended. Rhizomatic analyses are increasingly being adopted in educational research to challenge traditional power structures, give voice to those previously unheard and open issues in messy but authentic…