Reports on a microethnographic study of a number of classrooms in different areas of Negara Brunei Darussalam, a small Malay Islamic Monarchy on the Northern coast of Borneo, Southeast Asia. Focuses on one classroom in a small up-river school away from the malay center and in one of the few areas in the country where a form of Malay is not the…

Interviews with 13 occupational therapists who provide school-based services identified three themes: (1) reframing children's behavior, often with sensory integration theory; (2) supporting the child's psychosocial core and self-image; and (3) collaborating with team members, including parents, to help children achieve life goals. (SK)

Presents an in-depth ethnographic study of 11 at-risk young women attending a high school in a New York middle class neighborhood. Finds that three primary themes emerged: the young women's desire to have adults communicate with them in a non-hurtful way; to have what they learned be meaningful; and to be talked "with" instead of "at." (RS)

Argues that a humanist discourse prevalent in teacher relations with students, colleagues, and advisor/inspectors has been challenged by a "performativity" discourse that, among other things, distances teachers from students and creates a dependency culture in opposition to previous mutual and intimate relations. Concludes that the…

Discusses the possibilities of working with high school students as researchers of culture and language in their own school communities. Features a short ethnographic play entitled, "No Pain, No Gain," which dramatizes the difficulty of preparing an oral presentation in a second language. (Author/VWL)

Foregrounds issues of race, ethnicity, and education, and ties together two important issues in teaching basic writing: how social and pedagogical issues in higher education shape possibilities for bicultural students' writings, and how these students can use their developing sense of literacy and their texts to explore identity. Discusses…

Outlines an investigation into the types of learning experienced by adolescents involved in recreational youth theater. Proposes that youth theater has the capacity to provide essential rites of passage for young people. Concludes that drama has the potential to be a creator of consciousness during adolescence. (PM)

This essay, based on field observation and interviews centered in California, examines the aims and activities of both school ethnographers and school administrators, concluding that the methods and resources of the former could greatly benefit the latter. (DM)

Describes the career of Father Berard Haile (1874-1961), a Franciscan missionary and anthropologist who befriended Navajo Indians in Arizona and studied their culture. Haile's career spanned five decades, and he maintained a Navajo residence longer than any other Navajo ethnologist. Describes his writings, special fields, scholarly limitations,…

Identifies and analyzes 16 factors that influenced a largely unsuccessful collaborative writing process. Uses the language theory of Mikhail Bakhtin to explain how the factors operated together as forces impelled by the social context of the process. (RS)

Findings suggested that: (1) peer culture is not a unitary whole but rather a differentiated social system comprised of various groups and different types of players; (2) objects play an important role in peer culture as entry vehicles and social markers; and (3) play periods are social arenas in which the dynamics of the peer culture are enacted.…

This ethnographic study of interpretations about stress among hospital social workers reveals concrete ways that institutional systems take form in employees' mundane actions and interpretations. There was a dominant form of stress experience consistent with medical ideology and a marginalized form consistent with social work ideology. Ambiguity…

Describes the experiences of a master of arts student in professional writing and editing who undertook ethnographic research to explore ghostwriting in a military headquarters. Investigates the ways in which the military's review process influences writer psychology and the final written product. Discusses changes in local writing and reviewing…

Two approaches for evaluating community development are: community stories--locally developed ethnographies for community-led change; and sponsor-backed evaluation using coproduced indicators and standards. (SK)

Ethnography was applied to investigate 47 students' ability to persist in distance education courses in resource management and environment-related subjects. Results have been useful in deriving a classification of situational, institutional, dispositional, and epistemological problems shared by withdrawers and persisters in a broader context.…