This study is based on personal experiences. It adopts an auto ethnographic approach and action research perspective in an attempt to describe and reflect on my experience as a teacher in a University where I have worked for just over a year; the study also examines factors that have helped me in my role as a teacher to effect change in my praxis.…

Religion, like Superhero discourse, is a contested topic of question and debate in early childhood education. This article draws on data from a small ethnographic study that took place in a long day care centre in Sydney Australia. The study examined how children negotiated their "identity work" in the context of popular culture. In this…

As the culturally and linguistically diverse population of the United States continues to increase dramatically, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and special education teachers in particular face the challenge of how best to assess and teach those students whose primary language is not English. The changing U.S. demographics are driving a need…

The past decade has witnessed a remarkable explosion of knowledges across the academy, media and political discourse, generating a wide range of representations of men and masculinity. In this paper, we interrogate the failure for an accompanying understanding of the epistemological and methodological implications of the research process in this…

In this description of a learning community for "at-risk" and basic writing students at the University of Wyoming, I outline the reasons our students resist academic writing prior to their entry into college--reasons largely unrelated to typical perceptions of at-risk students as "lazy" or intellectually less capable. For…

Using methods from conversation analysis, this microethnographic longitudinal case study traces the development of interactional competence which results from adult learners' socialization into literacy events in a modified Sustained Silent Reading (mSSR) program. The investigation focuses on two learners who participated in the mSSR program in an…

This paper draws on data from a year-long ethnographic study of a group of 12- to 13-year-old girls that explored the processes through which they negotiated gendered physicality within the context of physical education. Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and social fields and McNay's extension of his work underpin a discussion of three contexts where…

Early federal government policies for American indigenous people alternated between extermination and assimilation. Imposing the colonists' and immigrants' language on indigenous people was important for achieving the latter. In the 1970-90's, federally funded grants for bilingual education for indigenous schools were offered to accommodate Native…

This book is the third volume of the paperback versions of "The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Edition." This portion of the handbook considers the tasks of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting empirical materials, and comprises the Handbook's Parts IV ("Methods of Collecting and Analyzing Empirical Materials") and V ("The Art and…

Instructors in general, but particularly first-year graduate teaching assistants tend to lump their undergraduate students into groups and give them various attributes. However appeasing such generalizations are at the moment, they are dangerous both to the teacher and the students. If the instructor thinks his or her students are all honors…

This ethnography explores the leadership qualities of a public school district media director, the person who "orchestrates" the use of technology. Using observation, interviews, and artifact analysis, the following questions were investigated: (1) What are the beliefs and values which underlie this media director's decisions?; (2) What are the…

This ethnographic study used multiple approaches to try to determine the emotional experience of young children (ages 5 to 8) with chronic illnesses. Forty-six children with severe asthma and diabetes were interviewed on two separate occasions using child-centered in-depth interviews that included play-based interviewing. The study also employed…

The Coalition of Essential Schools is a school reform movement based on nine principles formulated by Theodore R. Sizer on the basis of several years of research in secondary schools with the goal of creating thoughtful students who will become thoughtful adults. Coalition schools, which numbered 120 in 1992, represent a cross section of American…

This volume presents an overview of current anthropological thinking on the education of minority students, bringing the perspectives of educational anthropology to bear on understanding minority education and resolving its inequities. At the core of the book are some papers from an invited session of the American Anthropological Association in…

A qualitative ethnographic study examined three early childhood teachers' awareness, acceptance, and implementation of emergent literacy theory. The three teachers, from three different schools in two neighboring mid-Atlantic states, were chosen for their contrasting teaching styles. Each classroom was observed by a non-participant observer for…