In this study, Christopher Kliewer, Linda Fitzgerald, Jodi Meyer-Mork, Patresa Hartman, Pat English-Sand, and Donna Raschke use ethnographic methods to explore literacy development in young children considered to have significant disabilities. The study settings included nine preschool and kindergarten classrooms across five programs, all of which…

This commentary reviews "Negotiating Researcher Roles in Ethnographic Program Evaluation" and discusses the changing field of evaluation. It situates postmodern deliberations in evaluation anthropology and ethnoevaluation, two concepts that explore the interdisciplinary merger in evaluation, ethnography, and anthropology. Reflecting on Hymes's…

This two-year ethnographic study examines the life stories of Muslim women holding mid- and high-level leadership positions in Israeli-Arab segregated schools. The women emerged from their gendered and ethnic/nationality oppression as pathfinders with strong ambitions to further their education and careers. Using strategies that entailed the…

This study sought to extend previous research on ethnographic interviews as a method of culture learning in foreign language classes by employing a qualitative case study methodology. Fifty-four university students in a first-year Spanish course worked in pairs to conduct a series of three ethnographic interviews with a native speaker of Spanish.…

This article reports on ongoing work in initial teacher education (ITE) where student teachers have been required to observe and record children's play, to describe and analyse this, and to consider the pedagogical implications. They have been introduced to a theoretical background, which takes into account the increasingly multi-modal nature of…

Visual ethnographers increasingly use hypermedia for research, representation and teaching and learning. This article discusses these uses by reflecting on Visualising ethnography, a teaching and learning 'gateway' web site about the visual in the ethnographic process housing interviews, authored works, exhibitions, introductory texts and links.…

Over the last 20 years educational policies across the globe have become more closely aligned with industry interests. Jamaica is no exception. But what does this mean when the country's leading "industry" is tourism? It is no coincidence that in this decade the Ministry for Education became the Ministry for Education and Culture. When…

This article analyzes how professionals of early childhood education define Finnishness and how they deal with ethnicity. It illustrates how nationality and ethnicity are actualised in the everyday practices of preschool. As part of a one-year ethnographic study in two preschools, the study reveals that the liberal version of multiculturalism…

This study is a genre analysis which explores the specific discourse community of tax accountants. Tax computation letters from one international accounting firm in Hong Kong were analyzed and compared. To probe deeper into the tax accounting discourse community, a group of tax accountants from the same firm was observed and questioned. The texts…

This article explores the possibilities and impossibilities of establishing queer discursive spaces within a minority-language high school. Data examined here are from a three-year study of language and identity in a Francophone high school in Ontario, Canada. As two members of the larger research team, we draw on our close observations of teenage…

In this paper I focus on the narratives of youths who attended an alternative school after engaging in the street culture. Based on retrospective narrative stories I examine the ways in which returnees? returning decision stimulates reflections on their past experiences, both in mainstream schools as well as in the street, and the way in which the…

Ethnographic research, including interviews, focus groups, and observations were conducted to explore gendered dimensions of smoking among low level smokers, including the acceptability of smoking in different contexts; reasons for smoking; the monitoring of self and friends' smoking; and shared smoking as a means of communicating concern and…

This article responds to recent calls for greater clarity and transparency regarding methods in qualitative research. On the basis of a 3-year ethnographic study of the overrepresentation of minorities in special education, the authors address key tenets of grounded theory and attempt to reconcile some of the methodological challenges inherent in…

In recent years the number of students who are English Language Learners (ELL) in U.S. schools has increased dramatically. When they meet bilingual paraprofessionals in the classroom and on school grounds, ELL students learn that these paraprofessionals do seem to know everything (or at least the important things to survive at school). Bilingual…

In this article, the author invites everyone to join her as she follows Laurel Richardson's advice to use writing as a method of inquiry. To do so, she engages in a fictional conversation with Michel Foucault--later joined by actor-network theorist Michel Callon--in which she talks through and constructs understanding(s) of and from her research…