"Curanderismo," a Mexican folk practice, is a prevalent subject in Mexican American literature. Because much of the presence of "curanderismo" in Mexican American literature is only explored in ethnographic studies, the purpose of this study is to examine the artistic representation of "curanderismo" in the novels "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfo…

This article is concerned with the meanings that employees in industry attribute to representations of data and the contingencies of these meanings in context. Our primary concern is to more precisely characterize how the context of the industrial process is constitutive of the meaning of graphs of data derived from this process. We draw on data…

This article examines the relationship between shame, literacy and social relations by analyzing shame narratives told to the author by youth and adult literacy students during a 24-month ethnographic research project conducted in two Brazilian cities. Employing Bourdieu's theoretical framework and literature from the anthropology of emotions, the…

This article explores how under-theorized representations of whiteness in pedagogical literatures have informed simplistic ideas about white resistance among students. It is argued that the performance and practice of discourses of whiteness in pedagogical contexts, and the subjective, psychical and emotional complexities of engaging with…

To help in understanding the manner in which community, individual, and other factors in the United States and Mexico contribute to drug use among transnational migrants, this paper introduces a binational social ecology model of substance abuse in this population. We draw on our 2 NIH-funded ethnographic studies--1 on problem drinking and the…

Background/Context: It may appear a simple question for a 12 year old girl to ask: "what should I wear today for school?" But simplicity is deceptive when the possibilities are many and each carries with it a specific and dangerous weight. In this paper I start with a Hmong girl in Ban Rongrian, Thailand, as she faces forms of…

This paper is based on a year-long ethnography of a K-1 class. I report on the way gender was a significant implicit feature of interpreting kids' everyday classroom activities, like why boys tended to go to the computer center and girls did not. In addition to explicating the gendered interpretations, the paper also discusses the way teachers…

The aim of this study is to investigate and explain inconsistencies within the social constructions of school rules as they take shape in everyday interactions between teachers and students, and to explore how students interpret these inconsistencies. An ethnographic study is conducted in two primary schools in Sweden. According to the findings,…

This article examines the experiences of three Indigenous communities with language immersion models in preschool through 12th grades to revitalize and preserve their native languages through ethnographic research design and methods. The history and implementation of language instruction in three Indigenous communities are summarized. The analysis…

This dissertation examines the academic and social goals that three second-grade English language learners in a U.S. urban school bring to their blog-mediated academic writing practices, and the interrelated nature of those goals. This study aims to bridge the dichotomy between approaches to studying computer-mediated language and literacy…

This study investigated characteristics of five IMO winners and influences from their formal and informal educational experiences. In particular, this study provides in-depth understanding of former Korean IMO winners' characteristics and environmental influences. Also, implications including education for parents of the gifted, professional…

This case study investigates a professional development initiative in which a first-grade bilingual teacher engages in learning and teaching Cognitively Guided Instruction, a framework for understanding student thinking through context-rich word-problem lessons. The study explores (a) the impact of classroom-based professional development on a…

Engineering students in North American universities often participate in cooperative education placements in workplaces as part of the requirements for their degrees and professional certification. Students for whom English is an L2 often experience difficulties in these placements due to the fact that while their academic language ability may be…

When Delta blues are considered to be "folk music," the genre is inextricably tied to the neocolonial, sharecropping system of cotton production characteristic of the Mississippi Delta region between the Civil War and World War II. "Imperialist nostalgia," then, arises in accounts which pay primary and positive tribute to blues…

In "Situated Learning" (1991) Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger argue that mature identities motivate learning and that the image of master practitioners leads the social organization of learning opportunities, goals of newcomers, and relations between newcomers and others in a given community of practice. They further argue that learning is…