This ethnographic study sought to understand, from the native perspective, the traditional childbearing values and practices of Coast Salish peoples and the difficulties in maintaining these in a society that is not oriented to native values and practices. Observations and interviews were carried out over a 4-year period on the Songhees reserve in…

The study was conducted in a major United States city which was under a court order to desegregate its schools. The school district responded by establishing a series of magnet schools. This method was designed to bring whites voluntarily into movement for desegregation. Three middle schools were studied to assess the relationship between teachers…

The function of basic writing in the university is to teach students whose language practices are most distant from prestige forms to use language in ways which will enable their advancement in college and in the world outside. In composition studies, the awareness that the intelligent activity of students can produce apparently…

As more and more writing process oriented teachers must oversee, design, and execute classroom intervention studies, a discrepancy arises from the inappropriateness of the process style to the product orientation of research. In establishing experimental procedures, researchers try to account for all variables, but for process-oriented teachers,…

Recent research findings that have potential application or are already contributing to the refinement of educational practice in bilingual education include developments in language research, teacher effectiveness research, and ethnography. In language research, these contributions include work on the need for and types of language proficiency,…

The purpose of this paper is to consider how two distinct research methodologies differently structure for study the inputs, transactions, and outcomes of adult literacy programs. It is suggested that the appropriateness of a methodology for the study of adult literacy programs be determined by assessing the extent to which the methodology speaks…

Intended to aid media and other technical specialists who lack training in ethnographic research to understand what ethnography is, what ethnographers do, and how they, the media specialists, can be of most assistance when working on a team conducting such research, this paper discusses the nature of ethnographic research and issues involved in…

This compilation includes the following essays: (1) "Conversational Inference and Classroom Learning" (John J. Gumperz); (2) "Persuasive Talk--The Social Organization of Children's Talk" (Jenny Cook-Gumperz); (3) "Ethnography--The Holistic Approach to Understanding Schooling" (Frank W. Lutz); (4) "Triangulated Inquiry--A Methodology for the…

Although differences between field-dependent and field-independent subjects have consistently been described in research on personality variables, insufficient research has been done in classrooms to describe differences in teacher behavior as related to the field-dependence-independence construct. Using ethnographic techniques, this exploratory…

This paper makes three arguments reaffirming the overwhelming complexities inherent in any real history of the language of blacks in North America. (1) Although the study of black English, however that term may be defined, is desirable in itself and was profitable for white linguists during the 1960s and early 1970s, it did not and never will do…

A mapping procedure was used to analyze a massive amount of narrative data which was collected from observations of the implementation of an intervention. Mapping is the procedure of locating interventions in relation to one another conceptually, as a map does physically. As the data were analyzed, classifications and groupings of interventions…

A study of approximately 16 gifted third through sixth grade students was undertaken to describe the learning behavior of the group as they interacted with teachers and students. Observations of the students and interviews with teachers were used to obtain the data. Seventeen ethnographic recordings are included in the report. Among the 10…

Described in this paper is the educational background and schooling experienced by Haitian immigrant children who are presently enrolled in the New York school system. Different types of schools in Haiti (urban, rural, private, public, elementary and secondary), and the functions of these schools in Haitian society are examined. Other topics…

This monograph discusses a study of the quality of school life of students in comprehensive high schools in Quebec. Two methods were used to compile data: a survey of 30 secondary schools involving 2,000 students from 15 large and 15 small settings, and an ethnographic study of one large and one small school. Student attitudes toward school both…

The Indian woman has been viewed as a subservient and oppressed female; often overlooked were the economic, social and political positions women held within tribal societies. The biographies and autobiographies of Indian women that have been obtained over the last century can be used to examine this contradiction in perspectives. These accounts…