In contrast to Bogdan's approach (outlined in a preceding article), which considers fieldwork to be a research method, this author views ethnographic fieldwork as a paradigm. His graduate course in fieldwork concentrates on interpretation and stresses the quality, quantity, and intimacy of human relationships between observers and their subjects.…

Interviews with 105 teachers and 14 administrators, supplemented by observation, provide data for a focused ethnography of the school as a workplace, specifically, of organizational characteristics conducive to continued "learning on the job." Findings suggest critical social organization variables that lend themselves to quantitative…

Examines the extent to which two classrooms of rural southern first graders shared common sex-role beliefs within an institutional setting that emphasized conflicting (traditional and egalitarian) gender-specific expections. Findings are presented, including that boys and girls drew from the total range of masculine, feminine, and neutral…

Life history data of educators should be analyzed for research purposes. The focus should be changed from an obsession with specific events and statistical data to a much broader historical sweep. Life history investigations set against the background of teaching patterns should provide an antidote to depersonalized accounts of schooling. (JN)

Examines research interest in the ethnography of schooling (research on and in educational institutions based on participant observation and/or permanent recordings of everyday life in natural settings). Sociological and anthropological approaches to ethnography are compared. (Author/DB)

The author outlines the advantages of illuminative, or descriptive, research in education and points out the need in this field for verification and cumulation, proposing a national depository for descriptive case records. (SJL)

Ethnography can encounter such problems as timing and sequence, validity, superficiality and bias toward the typical. More than just participant observation should be used by anthropological researchers. Ethnographers should be active, joining in the responsibility for changing the circumstances of everyday life in schools and school communities.…

The synthesis of different analytic models on the study of urban neighborhoods is discussed in this review of five recent books. (RLV)

This article examines the impact of Seneca Indian culture on Lewis H. Morgan, the American ethnologist who formulated the science of human kinship. (RTS)

Presents and considers the vision of children as receptors of adults' ideological messages. Reviews examples of adults' rewriting for children, drawing primarily on the rewriting of folk stories. Reconstructs, using ethnographic data from urban schools, one branch of a classroom chain of communication. Discusses the classroom conditions that…

Draws from studies in the sociology of scientific knowledge to create a new perspective for understanding school science. Merges ethnography and discourse analysis to study science-in-the-making in a physics classroom. Investigates local conceptual ecologies. Contains 55 references. (DDR)

Examines neo-Marxist and poststructural critiques of classical language planning (lp) for relevance to lp on behalf of minority languages. Criticisms suggest lp is conducted by elites governed by self-interest, reproduces rather than overcomes sociocultural and econotechnical inequalities, inhibits multiculturalism, espouses worldwide…

Addresses the relationship between educational theory and classroom practice using data from an ethnographic study of English as a Second Language (ESL) learning at a Canadian school. Outlines the conflict between two language ideologies shaping and being shaped by ESL teachers', assistants' and students' classroom practices. Discusses…

Considers the extent to which constructionist epistemology provides a solution for achieving a link between qualitative-ethnographic and cognitivist research on foreign language acquisition. Points to the validity of qualitative research provided that there is clarity and explicitness of process so that those who read research can carry out their…

Outlines an approach to cultural instruction in adult second language education called "culture exploration," which calls for the recognition of ambiguity embedded in cross-cultural encounters. Culture exploration consists of employing techniques of ethnographic participant observation in and outside the classroom and holding reflective,…