Describes children's participating in dramatic play activities that are teacher or peer governed. Illustrates children's use of cultural symbols as material for story construction and social affiliation. Argues for a literacy curriculum in which cultural symbols are open to critical examination. (Author/SK)

Examines Shirley Brice Heath's letters and other materials at the time she was researching "Ways with Words." Finds that "Ways with Words" can most fruitfully be read as a story of the persistence of prejudice, suggesting the failure of the arguments in favor of desegregation to broker lasting reforms toward equity. (SC)

Describes the process that two professors used to help their graduate students begin to study their respective practices through ethnographic teacher-research. Notes that the systematic and intentional inquiry of teacher-research provided a relevant context for investigation of teaching and learning about literacy. Describes their processes of…

Provides a description of passing for a native speaker as a form of second language (L2) ability. Discusses ethnographic research into success in second language learning and explains why other approaches tend to identify a significantly lower incidence of high-level achievement. Data suggest age of exposure to the target language is less crucial…

Describes having students conduct micro-ethnographic research projects, in which students study how participants construct the meanings of social practices in the worlds of school, home, peer group, or various virtual worlds. Discusses research procedures, adopting a cultural perspective, selecting research topics, becoming a participant observer,…

Inductive analysis of the stories of five Mexican-American women in a literacy program resulted in a framework of myths or misperceptions that proceeds through stages of consciousness from magical to naive to critical. (Contains 41 references.) (SK)

Explicitly political research methodologies must be considered and incorporated into urban education in order to address issues of race, class, and gender equity. Draws from research on homeless children. (Author/MM)

This article presents a systematic ethnographic study of emic ethnic classification in Puerto Rico, including a replication and extension of Marvin Harris's (1970) seminal study in Brazil. I address three questions: (1) what are the core emic categories of color? (2) what dimensions of semantic structure organize this cultural domain? and (3) is…

Existing debates surrounding the effects of globalization on historically disenfranchised peoples, such as rural communities, have traditionally ignored grassroots organizations efforts to "globalize from below." Expanding on Appadurai's (2000) notion of globalization from below, this article examines the knowledge creation and social action of…

This article focuses on the discrepancy between school personnel's negative stereotyping of African American families and the family information gleaned by ethnographic research. Using findings from a 3-year ethnographic study of the special education placement process in a culturally diverse urban school district, we describe the general…

The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves-from Los Angeles to Miami-and rejecting the…

A unique introductory anthropology course at Texas Tech University introduces students to cultural diversity in the United States. Students read ethnographies--fieldwork-based descriptions of Hispanic, African American, and other communities--and then do ethnographic research of their own in the local community. This popular course encourages…

Geographers are fully engaged in the debate surrounding the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICT) and there has been a proliferation of research on the impact of ICT on geographical education. This includes analyses of how ICT may affect geographical learning paradigms (Hill & Solem, 1999; Rich et al., 2000; Solem, 2000)…

Past research has shown that many scientists, when asked to interpret unfamiliar graphs that have nevertheless been culled from introductory undergraduate courses in their own field, experience problems and cannot give the standard answer accepted in the field. Yet, these same scientists turn out to be highly competent when it comes to graphs from…

The way in which the culture of ethnography has been developed in classrooms that encourages teachers and students to question, doubt, reflect, revise and remain open to new possibilities, is discussed. Through the documentation of interactions and talks between teachers and students, a critical examination of the teachers and capabilities and…