Immigrant youth often rebuild their friendships and other social networks after arriving in a new country. The difficulties involved can threaten their psychosocial development. Formation of social networks needs to be understood within the macro sociocultural context that shapes the experience. Nonetheless, the current literature on social…

Most studies of lean production are based on surveys of managers. This article examines the labor process under lean production at a high-end garment factory in Central Mexico through ethnographic research, consisting of nine months of work at the factory, and in-depth interviews with 25 managers and 26 workers. The author found that…

This article seeks to explore the practice of repair in classroom discourse from an ideological perspective of language and literacy. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in an urban high school with a predominant English Language Learner (ELL) population, this paper outlines the theoretical foundations of repair from a "conversation…

Therapeutic discourse is the talk-in-interaction that represents the social practice between clinician and client. This article invites speech-language pathologists to apply their knowledge of language to analyzing therapy talk and to learn how talking practices shape clinical roles and identities. A range of qualitative research approaches,…

This article begins by arguing for some bridge building in ESOL research between what is often seen as a quantitative/qualitative dichotomy. Instead of taking up a position on one side or the other, the differences are construed as different ways of seeing, depending upon the nature of the research questions asked. As a qualitative researcher by…

Educational anthropologists have helped create symbolic spaces in which conversations can take place about children's lives, language, literacy, and learning. In the "New Word Order" children have no histories, no identities. Culture doesn't count. Home languages are considered interference. As the curriculum is narrowed by the use of…

Transitions are a significant aspect of the American educational system and therefore of interest to educational anthropology. Based on a two-year ethnographic study, this article explores the transitions between grade school and junior high and between childhood and teenhood for white girls in a privileged suburban community, and examines why the…

In dual immersion classrooms, students from different language backgrounds are immersed in the minority language for large portions of the school day with the expectation that they will become equally proficient in their first language (L1) and in their second language (L2). Research on dual immersion indicates that students reach above-average…

Studies of the workplace of teachers commonly focus on the spaces of the classroom, staffroom and school as pre-given and bounded entities. This article explores the possibilities of moving beyond such topographies of enclosure, towards seeing space(-time) as recursively constructed with social relations and so made and remade. Boundaries are then…

Boys in school, homophobia, and forms of masculinity are currently the focus of significant debate in and about education and schools. Much of this discussion takes as given the sexual orientation, and therefore sexual identity, of the students of whom it speaks and mobilizes equal rights discourses on behalf of gay and lesbian students. This…

Court ethnography assignments provide a wonderful way to teach observation skills in an unfamiliar legal setting. Most people obtain their knowledge of legal proceedings from television or movies and students are no exception. But teachers can teach students to closely examine court process and legal behavior in a sophisticated way by assigning…

This study unpacks the inherent tension that arises when any school adopts a particular model for reform--how to mesh a model with the reality of daily life in the classroom. In the field of bilingual education, programme models abound, and the literature reflects a great diversity among them, as well as efforts to evaluate their relative…

In this article, I explore issues of sexuality and reflexivity in language education research practices by revisiting a section of an interview between myself as researcher and a student research participant. The research interview was from a larger ethnographic study on cultural identities in a second language program, and the student was a…

I conducted an ethnographic study, situated within the conceptual framework of Critical Race Theory, which illustrates one child's experiences with racism. The study was conducted in an urban after-school program, and explores issues of racism in both the school and community settings. Utilizing the storytelling aspect of Critical Race Theory, I…

In this paper I describe and discuss the way that a book I had written on a five-year longitudinal study of school science teaching was received by the pupils and teachers it featured. By and large the pupils' reception was positive. However, one group of teachers was deeply hurt by the book. I trace this mainly to my failure to consider…