Noting that many instructors involved in teaching writing to students of differing cultural backgrounds seek to pinpoint the origin of the differences in communication between the form of written language conveyed to students and that which they use in their everyday language, this paper recommends ethnography to provide evidence as to what is…

An ethnographic case study investigated relations between teachers and parents of minority-language students in two elementary schools in a small California agricultural community. The study examined: (1) school district policies and guidelines concerning teacher interactions with parents and parent involvement in school activities; (2) the range…

This is the story of how one man, Atawe, born in the remote village of Wiyava in the Eastern Highlands of (Papua) New Guinea in the mid-1950's has increasingly immersed himself in a lifestyle which, even just a few years before he was born, was completely unknown to his people. His story is traced as he progressed from a village where the language…

Ways in which elementary school students value, adapt, and modify the curriculum are revealed by reporting statements of children in grades 2 through 4 in a midwestern parochial school. Over 250 hours of observation as well as interviews with students, teachers, parents, and the principal formed the basis of research. Data were assembled through…

The text of three papers are presented. The first, by Alma Ada Flor, focuses on the question "What is participatory research?" It is suggested that participatory research enriches the knowledge of participants and opens up new topics to them. The nature and theory fundmental to participatory research and the relation of participatory research to…

This report describes a pilot study to determine the needs of formerly homeless families in New York City and to help them make the transition from welfare hotels and shelters into new homes and to become stable and permanent residents of their communities. Three New York social services agencies assigned one or two caseworkers to nine homeless…

An ethnographic or anthropological perspective is useful for the reexamination of the assumptions and taken-for-granted nature of the practice of supervision. An indepth survey of literature on supervisors illustrates supervisory roles and the existence of a separate "supervisor culture". Specifically, the relationship between novice teachers and…

In socio-cultural field studies the professional investigator encounters problems which raise questions about the researcher's role and influence in the field. A study investigating how a lower and lower-middle class suburban socio-cultural society and an art teacher influence high school students' assumptions about art, also examines the…

An anthropological analysis of the phenomenon of citizenship education in the United States is summarized in this paper. Since school ethnography lacks depth in its use of anthropological theory, an attempt is made to overcome this deficiency by applying five theoretical approaches (evolutionary, functionalist, structuralist-functionalist,…

Written and published by the students at Gary High School, Gary, Texas, "Loblolly Magazine" is published twice a year. Issues are frequently devoted to a distant theme. The theme of this issue, "East Texas Storytellers," attempts to capture some of the local color and regional history of eastern Texas. The first article,…

Written and published by the students at Gary High School this volume has three articles dealing with East Texas life. The first "Arthur Smith" (David Hancock and others) is an account of growing up in Marian County, Texas is described by the local Baptist minister. The pastor begins with the year of his birth and gives detailed…

A comparison is made between the tools of observation and research used by journalists to study society and the media, and the qualitative and clinical research tools used in the social and psychological sciences. The first part of the paper, a journalistic approach to sociology, traces the notion of the sociologist as a super-reporter using…

An expansionist/reductionist model is proposed, in which the naturalistic inquirer uses qualitative methods for evaluating social studies and proposing suggestions for improvement. Qualitative research is seen as a means of presenting a sensitive picture of the world view of the population studied that cannot be obtained by other research…

To summarize knowledge on the effects of grouping and tracking in secondary schools, this synthesis uses ethnographic research to interpret the findings of survey analyses, and uses survey studies to assess the causal implications and degree to which ethnographic findings can be generalized. Survey studies consistently report that academic-track…

A number of methodological and substantive issues were raised by the ethnographic research for the book (coauthored by the author of this paper), "Teaching Tales and Theories: A Story and A Commentary on a Science Classroom" (1981). First, the origin of the "problem" came not only from earlier research but also from a serendipitous meeting with…