A way to support the educational ethnographer in developing a perspective on the art of qualitative research during an introductory course on qualitative research methods is explored through a study of how novice researchers begin to learn the elements and processes of qualitative research. A second purpose of the study is to investigate the use…

In "The Uses of Diversity," the interpretive anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, says that it is impossible to completely get inside the point of view of another culture. Geertz contends, however, that despite multiple voices in the growing body of reflexive ethnographies there is still an author composing the work. Besides Geertz,…

The American Indian, whether as a racial group or tribal group, is presumably the most researched group in the United States. Every aspect of Indian culture has been studied from topics such as "uses of time" to "forms of public speaking." Although the Indian has been thoroughly studied, there is a lack of current research that…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined how six women headteachers worked as school leaders. Specifically, it looked at how they conducted different management tasks, how they interpreted their behavior and values, and how their childhood experiences influenced their current career behaviors. Data were derived from observation, joint…

The power relations between ethnographers, teachers and students present more than a few difficulties. When one graduate student sat in on--in fact, became a student in--another graduate student's elementary composition class, "The American Experience through Literature," several problems arose concerning the status of the…

A study investigated the nature of reading difficulties from the perspective of sixth graders in a low-income school district on the border of New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. R. C. Bogdan and S. K. Biklin (1992) describe this style of research as an attempt to gain entry into the conceptual world of subjects to understand what meaning they…

This case study documents time spent as a graduate student/participant-observer with the members of a campus organization for Jewish students. Findings are framed according to the phases of organizational socialization from anticipated differences through experiences that resulted in the acceptance of the newcomer. The study examines the…

A semester-long, introductory, freshman composition class (24 students) engaged in fieldwork, interviews, workshopping, a literature review, an ethnography, and a final paper allowing the student to critique their experiences with the ethnographic process. The first 2 weeks were spent familiarizing students with the ethnographic process. Through…

This digest describes a research model that has shown how classroom practice can be developed, transformed, and enriched by drawing on existing "funds of knowledge" in minority students households. Funds of knowledge refers to those historically developed and accumulated strategies (e.g., skills, abilities, ideas, practices) or bodies of…

To shed light on reciprocal social networks for adult literacy learners, an ethnographic study sought to understand the dynamics of social networks from a sociocultural perspective, that of the adult basic education learners themselves. Subjects were a diverse population of six adult learners at a suburban adult education center (five working to…

Focusing on the local level where change is supported or resisted, an ethnographic study examined the response of a town in upstate New York to demands for broadening the curriculum within the context of altering the educational environment to better serve the needs of minority youth. The controversy began when a school board member refused to…

Ethnographic study, which calls for tape-recorded interview data, requires a means of interpreting such data. One manner of interpretation is the fairly typical approach of providing descriptive and interpretive accounts of the persons who populate particular social scenes. Excerpts from or transcripts of recorded interviews are often used to…

Based on personal experiences in conducting intensive ethnographic fieldwork, the social, emotional, and personal aspects of fieldwork that are often neglected in the literature are considered. The fieldwork involved observations within five diverse secondary schools during a 2-year period in conjunction with a project on microcomputer…

Participant observation, one of the fieldwork techniques of ethnography, requires a definition of and delicate balance between the roles of participant and observer and a clear understanding of the involvement of the researcher in these two roles. Ethnography is the study of the geographical distribution of people and their relation to their…

This document, the third edition of the bibliography of the Philippines Summer Institute of Linguistics, contains about 2,300 citations on 83 languages. The technical works cited include (1) textbooks for language study; (2) papers resulting from general linguistic research; (3) descriptions of the philologies, grammars, and lexicons of specific…