Based on an ethnographic project, this article examines ways that the Indian middle class, with its easy access to English, represents an inner circle of power and privilege that is inaccessible to particular groups of people in India. Certain institutional and teaching practices keep English out of reach of lower income and lower-caste groups and…

Presents the multiple stories one female, African-American professor experienced within her research, examining her experiences as a marginalized member of the academy conducting qualitative research within a community with which she identified while simultaneously conversing with an older, female, African-American mentor. The paper highlights her…

An ethnographic study of the experiences of graduate students (N=8) learning to consult revealed three primary themes. Content analysis and subsequent structural corroboration of three datasets indicated participants' application of procedures, awareness of professional perspectives, and emphasis on attending relationships. Discusses implications…

Presents a study that uses a quasi-ethnographic methodology employing impressionistic tales of the field to explore constraints and successes encountered by teachers while implementing innovative teaching approaches in middle school classrooms. A new middle school structure blended elementary and secondary school cultures. Presents three tales…

Using ethnographic techniques, this article explores the complex interaction of control and caring in two alternative education programs for students resisting traditional schooling in Cincinnati (Ohio) Public Schools, a predominantly low-income, African-American urban school district. A community-based orientation for staff proves essential in…

Addresses ways to reexamine the world of information from small world perspectives and suggests implications for public libraries. Highlights include a conceptual scheme to examine small world lives, including social norms, world views, social types, and information behavior; and ethnographic inquiries to illustrate how qualitative methodology can…

Suggests that in digital library services assessment, anthropology can provide the initial understanding, the intellectual basis, on which informed choices about sample population, survey design, or focus group selection can reasonably be made. Analyzes the National Gallery of the Spoken Word (NGSW). Includes brief descriptions of nine NGSW…

Describes engagement of children in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan with projects of nationalism. Outlines different visions for the children's future and ways these visions inform actions of their proponents. Focuses on how children draw upon different discourses of national community in the process of developing identities that are strongly…

Focuses on how Yemeni American high school girls employ religious, Arabic, and secular texts as means for negotiating home and school worlds. Explores the hidden texts in their high school, and the texts of weddings and parties, of Arabic school, and of "muhathara" (lecture). Finds these girls' identities shifted to reflect their textual…

Drawing on the ethnography of communication, addresses the role of electronic channels for meaning making among Korean students in graduate TESOL classes in the United States. Looks at the ways that these electronic literacies provide opportunities for navigating Korean and U.S. cultures of learning. (Author/VWL)

Reports on exploratory ethnographic research on language acquisition and use in a village located in the Mandara Mountains, Cameroon. Indicates that members of the community share several beliefs and practices related to multilingual communicative competence and its development. (Author/VWL)

Describes teacher communication activities that students in two graduate preprofessional classrooms identified as face-relevant, relying on an interdisciplinary link between identity management and student motivation research. Demonstrates the positive motivational consequences of instructor face-support during these face-relevant interactions.…

This ethnographic study explores the contradictory literacy practices of 10 high school students of Mexican background from the rural Midwest. The author uses the term "Mexican background" to encompass both settled Mexican Americans and recent-immigrant Mexicanos. Literacy is investigated through English and Spanish in a sociocultural…

In this ethnographic study, I investigate the ways in which students of Mexican descent who are designated as limited English proficient are "acquired" by particular social positions in a northern California high school. Focusing on two interrelated and reflexive phenomena in the high school--standardized testing for assessing English…

In this essay, the author theorizes and illustrates how engaging students in reflective talk can help them change their minds. The essay specifically addresses how patterns for reflective talk can support both the sustained, nonevaluative exploration of difficult material and the self-scrutiny necessary for acknowledging the implication in…