Examines the relationship between macro and micro perspectives on the organization of participation structure, and considers how both perspectives can be useful to the ethnographer of interaction. Examples are drawn from a study of Navajo preschool and supported by a substantial body of classroom ethnography in other Native-American communities.…

This ethnographic study examines the local enactment of literacy practice in the new policy context created by California's Proposition 227. Considers the influence of the law on two elementary schools in a rural district that allowed schools to choose how they would implement Proposition 227. Analysis explores the connection between the…

Examines the way Italian-Canadian youth negotiate their identities through their language practices. Views identity as multiple and shifting and shows how eight Italian-Canadian youths in Toronto lean on different aspects of their identities through their daily linguistic and cultural practices across and within multiple worlds. (Author/VWL)

In this article we analyze the intersections and disjunctures between everyday (home, community, peer group) and school funds of knowledge and discourse (Gee, 1996) that frame the school-based, content area literacy practices of middle school-aged youth in a predominantly Latino/a, urban community of Detroit, Michigan, in the United States. Using…

Recent literature in science education suggests that, to transform girls' participation, learning, and identities within school science, we must think about ways to engage girls in different kinds of educational activities that promote broader meanings of science and scientist. This study was designed to examine more deeply this call for a changed…

The purpose of this article is to report findings from an ethnographic study that focused on the co-development of science literacy and academic identity formulation within a third-grade classroom. Our theoretical framework draws from sociocultural theory and studies of scientific literacy. Through analysis of classroom discourse, we identified…

This article explores the ways in which young emergent bilingual children begin to develop literacy in two languages, Spanish and English. Three case studies of four-year-old Mexican-background children and their families living in southern Arizona are presented from a qualitative socio-psycholinguistic perspective. The children's home and…

In order to respond to the growing academic diversity in classrooms, teachers must recognize that their students have different needs and commit to differentiating instruction accordingly; however, the relationship between teachers' willingness and ability to differentiate instruction and principals' attitudes toward differentiation is unknown. In…

There is increasing agreement among those who study classrooms that learning is likely to be most effective when students are actively involved in the dialogic coconstruction of meaning about topics that are of significance to them. This article reports the results of an extended collaborative action research project in which teachers attempted to…

The purpose of this study was to examine toddlers' emotional reactions to separation from their primary caregivers through the observation on a group of toddlers (18-30 months old) at a university preschool classroom. Interactional ethnography with ethnographic perspective and sociolinguistic discourse analysis was used as the theoretical…

This study examined the development of implicit race attitudes in American and Japanese children and adults. Implicit ingroup bias was present early in both populations, and remained stable at each age tested (age 6, 10, and adult). Similarity in magnitude and developmental course across these 2 populations suggests that implicit intergroup bias…

Ethnographic case studies of nine British working class children were conducted in order to investigate learning from the perspectives of the families. The research aim was to study children learning outside school in situations that were not specifically set up with learning in mind; in social contexts where learning was not an obligation or…

This article is a reflective account of a researcher's journey whilst embarking on a study which was political in its intentions and participatory in its orientation. Learning from feminist writings, where researchers have shared stories and explored notions of insider/outside, academic/activist, the central argument of the article is the…

Based on a one-and-a-half-year ethnographic study of a desegregated urban middle school, this article investigates the ways in which administrators, students, and teachers multiply constructed race through a network of policies, pedagogies, and practices. Using a framework of cultural production theory and critical race theory, the article not…

We argue for the value of postmodernism in illuminating the roles or subject positions of ethnographic program evaluators. Drawing upon data from an ethnographic study of a summer college readiness program for African American, Asian American, and Anglo youth, we explore how postmodern theories can provide insights into the multiple roles of…