This article focuses on power, difference and knowledge, areas critical to adult education. It conveys insights into how educators and curators in an art museum imagined and engaged with difference, and particularly the black subject, when working within a collaborative project that included the acquisition of art objects (fine art photography).…

Based on ethnographic research in a diverse New York City neighborhood, this article examines issues surrounding the practice of crossing from children's perspectives. Crossing refers to the use of language varieties to which one does not have conventional access, practices that could be disparaging or affiliative. The author explores how children…

The present article explores the way children engaged with the buraku issue in Japan shape the collective discourses concerning the "buraku minority identity", and re-design the "Otherness", through being rooted in non-ethnic and universal standards, such as local attachment, socioeconomic values, community and family-based…

There is an ongoing debate over the nature and necessity of teacher "professionalism", particularly in early childhood education. In England, this sector was a particular focus of the education policies of Labour governments in the 2000s, and this had a significant impact on early childhood teachers and classrooms. This article examines…

Comparatively little research has been conducted regarding the smart technology needs of the older adult population despite the proliferation of smart technology prototypes. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceived smart technology needs of older adults with mobility impairments while using an ethnographic research approach to…

This study focuses on the use of mentoring by a peer as a way to help teachers of marketing to develop their teaching skills. Using self-ethnography, we elaborate on the potential of intradepartmental faculty mentoring in teaching (FMIT) to enhance the quality of marketing education. The study describes FMIT, a novel type of mentoring, reviews its…

How teachers "care" for students is a well-established line of inquiry in educational research, but the ways such "care" may function as symbolic violence have received scant attention. In this ethnographic investigation of classroom disciplinary interactions, the characteristics and functions of preservice teachers' care discourses are examined.…

In this paper, I trace three traditions and bodies of work: The Chicago School of Sociology, the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and the New Sociology of Education. Each of these traditions evolved in distinct though overlapping ways. Taken together, they offer a productive set of resources for thinking through the complexities of popular…

"From High Skill to High School" details the experiences of immigrant professionals in an adult education employment program. This research reveals that immigrants with graduate degrees and years of international work experience are put through curriculum designed for adolescents with limited work experience, and collectively perform…

As researchers seek to make sense of young people's online literacy practices and participation, questions of methodology are important to consider. In our work to understand the culture of physical, virtual and blended spheres that adolescents inhabit, we find it necessary to expand Gee's (2004) notion of affinity spaces. In this article, we draw…

This frontline volume contributes to the social study of education in general and literacy in particular by bringing together in a new way the traditions of language, ethnography, and education. Integrating New Literacy Studies and Bourdieusian sociology with ethnographic approaches to the study of classroom practice, it offers an original and…

This study considers how communication patterns shape the university tutor role. A combination of ethnographic observations and interviews were used to determine the communication behaviors of university tutors and tutees, which help to define what is, otherwise, an ambiguous role. Specifically, the communicative behaviors engaged in by tutors are…

This paper gives a history of the Oxford Ethnography Conference. Over more than three decades, a regular conference of sociologists of education and ethnographers has met and produced a series of academic writings. The paper describes some of the interrelationships between developments that occurred within the conference and external changes to…

The study is focused on understanding identity construction through combining my own experience with the theoretical underpinnings of postcolonial theory, social identity theory and through the examination of two films. The central question that I am interested in is understanding the identity construction and formation process especially as it…

One of the great challenges social studies teachers face is promoting economic and consumer literacy among their students. Fostering such literacy helps students to think critically and independently about their own roles as consumers as well as about the claims and promises the corporate world makes through mass advertising and the branding of…