This study explored how designers "perceived" and "used" narrative during the creation of an educational video game. A qualitative, ethnographic, single case study approach was used to collect and analyze data pertaining to the narrative design trajectory of the game design team as well as Citizen Science, the game artifact…

How might institutional projects to improve the status of minority languages and publics have unintended and contradictory consequences? This dissertation examines media and language practices in order to illuminate the everyday sociocultural processes by which the value of knowledge is figured. It focuses on news media institutions in the Buryat…

This study is an ethnographic portrait of Interpretive Naturalists at a Midwestern state park. The study exhibits the ways in which Interpretive Naturalists learn about a place, how they create meaning about a place, and how they transmit this knowledge to others. Principle findings include the use of experiential storytelling and intimate contact…

This autoethnography describes one administrator's experience with being openly queer in an urban school. This study aims to describe, through story, the process of coming out and the how the lived experiences of one administrator impact her leadership identity. This works aims to be an example of the process of leadership development through…

The paper applies Hoyle's notion of "extended" professionality to modern higher education working. It begins with some of the policy contexts and theoretical perspectives around the structural and professional change experienced by academic staff: changes that have been documented in systematic studies of university life from the 1970s onwards.…

This paper is concerned with how research ethics is evolving along with emerging online research methods and settings. In particular, it focuses on ethics issues implied in a hypothetical virtual ethnography study aiming to gain insights on participants' experience in an emergent context of networked learning, namely a MOOC--Massive Online Open…

Despite the plethora of college student identity development research, very little attention has been paid to the identity formation of international students. Rather than adopting existing identity theories in college student development, this exploratory qualitative study proposes a new psychosocial identity development model for international…

This study examines patterns of use of prescription drugs and methamphetamine. We drew our sample from a study about 130 active and inactive methamphetamine users and focused on 16 participants with a recent history of methamphetamine and prescription drug use. We collected in-depth interviews to explore relationships in use trajectory patterns.…

The concept of coupling--the relationship between the environment, administrative goals, and instructional practices of education organizations--is a staple in New Institutional research. Yet processes of coupling have remained elusive. Drawing on ethnographic research of the "Ontario Learning Center" (OLC) franchise, along with…

Studio-based instruction, as traditionally enacted in design disciplines such as architecture, product design, graphic design, and the like, consists of dedicated desk space for each student, extended time blocks allocated to studio classes, and classroom interactions characterized by independent and group work on design problems supplemented by…

Exploring the lives of rural lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth and their identity work, Mary Gray's "Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America" offers one of the first ethnographic studies of queer rural life in the United States and their use of new media. Throughout, Gray provides…

By means of an ethnographic project, Sarah Goode's Understanding and Addressing Adult Sexual Attraction to Children aspires to better understand the self-conception and self-identification of pedophiles, with the ultimate aim of deconstructing the phenomenon by which culture demonizes pedophiles in order to better protect children. However, the…

Drawing on concepts developed in actor-network theory and postphenomenology this article shows how material objects in the science classroom become part of epistemic configurations and thus co-shape science education. An ethnographic study on epistemic objects in science education is the basis for the analysis of two of these objects: experimental…

The purpose of this article is to analyse how humour and narratives about humour are used in a natural group of adults with Asperger's syndrome. Narratives about humour and use of humour in the group are analysed from a discursive psychological perspective, informed by insights from both disability studies and critical autism studies. The setting…

Currently, many scholars have increasingly turned to the Internet to examine diasporic communities and corresponding identities. While I am happy that social scientists have embraced the use of online methods in studying communities formed within cyberspace, I also believe that we should continually reflect on whether our research is best served…