Ethnographic study of science lab technicians' troubleshooting suggests that they possess most of a lab's contextual knowledge and skill and play a critical role in the production of scientific knowledge. However, because contextual knowledge is less valued than formal knowledge, technicians experience status inconsistencies. (SK)

Presents an ethnographic study of a first-grade whole-language classroom. Focuses on the teacher's philosophical evolution and the pivotal classroom interactions that served to translate her beliefs into practice. Notes that, even for a master teacher, the temptation to retain control was formidable. (RS)

Discusses (in a special issue on the topic of criteria for the admissibility of evidence) the contributions and limitations of conversation analysis and postmodernism toward the enterprise of ethnographic research. Proposes criteria for qualitative data to be admissible as evidence for claims about social life and for a qualitative study to count…

A researcher collected data on family literacy in a Mexican-American community and shared findings with parents. As a result, parents organized a group to demand school responsiveness to their needs. The researcher changed her role to become involved in empowering parents. (SK)

The mythical purity of research and scientific method leads to limited practice. Teacher researchers should question the universality of findings and recognize their position as researchers and as classed, raced, and gendered subjects, moving the focus away from policymakers and toward a wider constituency. (SK)

A recent ethnographic study that interviewed 11 elementary principals provides examples of how principals with limited resources can build relationships with low-income parents. Effective principals set goals, expand services to children and families, provide parenting education, negotiate and celebrate cultural differences, build strong…

Ethnographic fieldwork is advocated as two ways for student affairs educators to enhance practice. Recent fieldwork and published ethnographic texts about college students are used to illustrate three benefits: (1) access to students' experience and culture; (2) access to student and campus culture; (3) enhance practice through informed…

Considers a semester-long ethnographic case study of three freshmen and looks at the very difficult situation unprepared students encounter. Suggests that teachers can help students relax and learn by exercising flexibility in their pedagogies. (SC)

Presents an ethnographic study into whether or not reading and writing about literature helps medical students communicate more effectively in the physician-patient encounter. Demonstrates that although medical students were embedded in the discourse of medicine, reflective writing enabled them to conceive medicine as an interpretive, personal,…

Describes how the author used "democratic" directing methods in her after-school play rehearsals of Shakespeare to help high school students navigate the shifting space between their own creative freedom and the conventional confines of a public high school. Details her use of unorthodox rehearsal strategies involving student…

Collecting outdoor adventurers' stories for research is best done using the naturalistic inquiry paradigm. This type of hypothesis-free investigation, used in the study of folklore, requires maintaining the normal storytelling context while meeting scholarly demands for reliability and validity. Choice of focus and site, the participant-observer…

Examines how the minority drug problem is framed in terms of anomie and underclass models suggesting that drug subcultures in urban black areas are formed as an adaptation to aggregate community conditions. The article considers how researchers use ecological and ethnographic data to back up claims that drug subcultures are a response to inner…

Examines a work initiative that moved welfare recipients into jobs as nurse assistants at a geriatric facility. The women's stories describe a welfare-to-work program in practice and illustrate how and why earnest efforts to mediate poverty resulted instead in the continued marginalization and stigmatization of poor people. (RJM)

States that in a methods course for elementary education majors, students are asked to keep a notebook to respond to course readings, collect writing starts, reflect on their schooling histories, and collect data from their 10-week field experience in an elementary classroom. Discusses one notebook; presents a sample ethnographic research…

A writing group of Philadelphia elementary and middle school women principals and an educational ethnographer share some of their journal entries and reflections on that writing. The connection between the group's work and that of educational ethnographers is discussed. (MMU)