There has been sufficient research in the area of conceptual change that indicates that students' conceptions or alternative theories are much more resistant to change than was previously thought. The work of cultural anthropologists, and more recently science educators, points to the role of individual world views in the learning of science…

What happens in a classroom that fosters the Harvard Project Zero teaching for understanding framework? That is the initial inquiry for this pilot ethnographic study of African American fifth graders in an urban public school. The study sets out to show how children are engaged in a class set up to understand science and mathematics. Themes…

Elementary teachers have a significant responsibility to foster children's abilities to read and write; today they are also encouraged to incorporate technology in their classrooms. This article reports results from an ethnographic study that examined the inquiry and process writing approaches a fourth-grade teacher used in a classroom where…

Outlines an approach to teaching fieldwork that the author has used in graduate seminars. The course, which requires students to engage in data collection, is organized to follow the stages of an actual research project. (GC)

Describes ethnographic classroom research. Documents process approach to teaching of writing. Classroom teachers and researcher discuss (1) scheduling first-grade writing activities to improve transition from home to school, (2) using journals to encourage writing processes of second graders, (3) sharing as a motivation for writing, (4) approaches…

Transfer of learning among the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains and among three clinical disciplines (medicine, pediatrics, and surgery) was examined in the final year of a medical student clerkship program. A model based on ethnographic analysis followed by performance measurement was used. (Author/MLW)

Outlines an alternative research method to capture the dynamics of local situations and accompanying interactions by describing sense-making in classrooms and the community and defining ethnomethodology and interpretation followed by a discussion of a case study and its usefulness to Indian education research. (ERB)

Utilization of ethnographic models to analyze, compare, and locate conflicts and/or discontinuities between home and school cultures can make the blending of those cultures more harmonious for Native American students. Differentiates between enculturation and acculturation. (CM)

This paper is a review of recent anthropological research on women. Topics of the research discussed include gender stratification, sexual asymmetry, ethnography and the influence of social, sexual, political, and economic factors on the roles women play in different societies throughout the world. (EB)

Argues that scientific knowledge in school is a social construct in which curriculum proposals are simply points of departure that are transformed by the social interaction that takes place within the classroom. Considers discourse as playing an important role in knowledge construction. Contains 31 references. (DDR)

Reports on an ethnographic research project in Liverpool, England. Aimed to build an understanding of the communicative and symbolic roles of languages and literacies in the Liverpool Somali community, which forms part of the Somali diaspora within Britain. The role of literacy is of particular interest in the context of a vigorous oral tradition…

Examines various criteria that have been proposed for evaluating the increasing number of empirical studies carried out using qualitative research methods and demonstrates how such criteria may privilege certain forms of qualitative research while excluding others. Select existing evaluative criteria for qualitative research proposed by applied…

This paper reports results of a longitudinal, ethnographic study of the psychosocial adaptation of parents of children with autism. Most parents reported improvements in their psychological well being, the social experiences of their immediate family, and their relations with their extended family. They also reported changes in stressful…

Presents a dialogue between an experienced basic researcher and a teacher-researcher following a meeting in which bilingual teachers and university teacher educators discussed a project involving teacher-researchers' attempts to use oral history to incorporate language minority parents' and grandparents' voices into elementary social science…

Examines the performance and construction of subjectivities of four early adolescent, sixth-grade girls as they read and discussed a novel about two adolescent Mexican children seeking a new life in America. Suggests they engaged in ongoing construction of their subjectivities as they interacted with the text and each other. Notes the girls…