Recent research has shown how quantifiable aspects of community context affect a wide range of behaviors and outcomes. Due partially to the historical development of this field, currently published work focuses on urban rather than rural areas. We draw upon data from a longitudinal study of families and health in Appalachia--the Great Smoky…

This paper considers how three Canadian high-school students--Ryan, Jeremy, and Bruce--engaged in queer critical praxis intended to free lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified, and queer (LGBTQ) students from the silence, exclusion, and symbolic and physical violence that heterosexism and homophobia provoke in schools. We, the authors, construct…

This paper examines young South African school children's understanding of HIV/AIDS. Based on ethnographic work in two schools in Greater Durban, it explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated against the backdrop of race and class specific contexts. The first part of the paper examines the children's…

This article is a poetic retelling of insight gained as a Black woman surviving graduate school. The purpose of this autoethnographic narrative is to document a few pivotal graduate school experiences that illustrate all that it means to become disciplined in and by higher education. Although the violence committed in such a privileged space may…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to answer two interrelated questions: "Who learns and how in the learning organization?". By implication, many theories of the learning organization are addressed that are based on a static and erroneous separation of individual and collective. Design/methodology/approach: Four episodes from a larger case…

This article describes two very different projects undertaken in the same basic writing course: collaborative ethnography and ACT test prep. At first glance, it appears that the work on collaborative ethnography accomplished our goal of creating better, more self-conscious writers while the work on test prep achieved our goal of creating better…

In this article, the authors discuss how the University of Rochester's two-year ethnographic study reveals what students do on campus and how the library fits in. Under Nancy Fried Foster's guidance, teams of librarians and staff conducted a two-year investigation. The goal: to improve the libraries' reference services, facilities, and web pages…

Child-centred research methods present a range of opportunities for the researcher to gather rich and detailed data on many aspects of the lives of children. This article examines the experience of using such methods in the context of a study of children as consumers of clothing and fashion. Its principal concern is with the application of an…

In this article, we examine how Christianity provides the impetus for local literacy practices in a rural community in Uganda. These Christian literacy practices form a central part of the literacy activities of the community and are manifested in a variety of contexts from public to private, using a wide variety of readily available religious…

In this ethnographic inquiry we portray two teacher narratives reflecting educational change in the context of two South African schools. The study was conducted as part of a larger inquiry into ten schools in urban South Africa. A decade of democracy begs some attention to educational progress and reform, from the viewpoint of teachers and with…

In 12 audio taped sessions, three kindergarten children engaged algebra in a teaching for understanding, thematic project. Toni, Asa, and Cornel had one-on-one lessons dealing with simple natural numbers, patterns, and relationships. Along the way, each child studied one of Toni Morrison's Who's got game books to explore repetition patterns in…

Despite receiving an unprecedented level of government funding to ensure young people have two hours of high quality physical education (PE) and sport, physical educators in the UK continue to decry poor motivation levels and disengaged youth in PE. The major purpose of this paper is to achieve a greater understanding of the factors that motivate…

Reflexivity has gained paramount status in qualitative inquiry. It is central to debates on subjectivity, objectivity, and, ultimately, the scientific foundation of social science knowledge and research. Although much work on doing reflexivity by researchers and practitioners has been published, scholars have only recently begun to explore how one…

Calls for decolonizing knowledge have been heard from multiple fronts for some time. At issue are questions regarding who gets to claim knowledge, how knowledge is claimed, and how is one to go about gaining knowledge. This article raises questions about the actual practice of decolonizing academic knowledge focusing on the implications of having…

In this piece, drawing from performance autoethnography, third world feminism, and postcolonial/cultural studies, the author interrogates "how do I play scholar?" The author uses Judith Butler's question "how do I play gender?" and her notions of performativity to dance around, using the voices of the "Thug" and the…