This article offers a theoretical account of school literacy development that foregrounds the symbolic and social resources of childhood cultures. Drawing upon ethnographic data collected in an urban school site, this article illustrates how the playful childhood practices of a small group of young school children shaped their entry into school…

Although the mixed heritage population of the U.S. continues to grow, few (if any) attempts have been made to examine educational needs specific to this group of children, especially from the family's perspective. This article uses ethnographic data to examine the experiences of one mixed heritage family--with an African American father and a…

This article presents the results of an ethnographic research project that looked at architectural students' experiences of disciplinary acculturation. The research focused on the architectural review: a pedagogic event used for the assessment of students' design projects and commonly understood as a liberal celebration of student creativity. The…

One perpetual concern among Indigenous Australian peoples is authenticity of voice. Who has the right to speak for, and to make representations about, the knowledges and cultures of Indigenous Australian peoples? Whose voice is more authentic, and what happens to these ways of knowing when they make the journey into mainstream Western academic…

This article is part of a year-long ethnographic study conducted in an English dominant kindergarten in the United States. The classroom comprised 6 Spanish-bilingual English language learners and 17 native English speakers. The study was based on a theoretical framework that views language as the site for constructing social meaning and…

This study utilized elements of technology-rich ethnography to create a rich description of a multi-user virtual environment in a high school computer programming class. Of particular interest was the transition that took place in classroom culture from one characterized by a well-defined problem solving approach to one more indicative of open…

Social constructivist theories of race suggest no two measures of race will capture the same information, but the degree of "error" this creates for quantitative research on inequality is unclear. Using unique data from the General Social Survey, I find observed and self-reported measures of race yield substantively different results when used to…

This article presents partial findings of an ethnographic study in a Quechua rural community in the Peruvian Andes. It discusses the uses of hegemonic Spanish literacy practices in the school. These were characterized by emphasis on formal issues over meaning; students lives, cultural, and linguistic resources were ignored. However, there were…

Using in-depth interviewing, participant observations, and the review of historical and curricular documents, this paper describes and analyzes two Latino community-based small high schools--the Dr Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS) and El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice (El Puente). The findings suggest that these schools are successful…

The authors explore the ways current curricula continue to frustrate parental and student goals in the classroom, focusing on three separate ethnographic studies of subjects from African American, Appalachian, and Latino backgrounds. The researchers determine that, despite the idiographic nature of their individual studies, many marginalized…

This study, based on ethnographic methods, explores how the professional identities of a group of bilingual (Spanish/English) Latino/a teachers-in-the-making in an urban public school district in the USA are formed and enacted. It illustrates the national and local discourses that influence novice bilingual teachers in their professional…

This paper describes research that explored the question of whether or not it is possible to characterise and teach a single type of educationally productive talk. We analysed and compared the quality of children's interactional strategies when jointly working on a reasoning task and a psycholinguistic task. The latter involved writing an…

This article examines the collaboration of 2 teachers with the families of their pupils. The data were collected during an ethnographic study conducted in a rural school in Cyprus. The data set includes individual interviews, focus groups, observations, and the researcher's journal. These 2 teachers, with different perspectives on parental…

This paper refocuses attention on and problematizes girls' experiences of school achievement and the construction of schoolgirl femininities. In particular, it centres on the relatively neglected experiences and identity work of high achieving primary school girls. Drawing upon ethnographic data (observations, interviews, and pupil diaries) from a…

This planning study was designed and conducted in a predominantly rural Canadian province to examine the strengths and learning needs of four categories of nursing staff practising in New Brunswick nursing homes. Participants included directors of care, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and resident attendants. The nursing homes ranged…