While language switching among multilinguals has been studied in a wide variety of contexts, few attempts have been made to generalize or to integrate findings into useful communication theory. Since language switching is an important part of personal as well as group identity and since issues surrounding language identity are often a focal point…

The symposium from which these papers are gathered was one component of the Assessment of Bilingual Persons Project to pursue research on the nature of language proficiency and to keep teachers informed of related assessment issues for classroom assessment improvement. The papers include: "A Sociolinguistic/Discourse Approach to the…

An ethnographic study was made of a student-led speech event in an ethnically mixed combined first- and second-grade classroom. In an activity called "Sharing Time," general rules governed appropriate ways of behaving, but no teacher rules governed ways of speaking, topic, or amount of time at talk. Collected over a 5-month period, data…

This paper proposes examining cooperative learning from an anthropological perspective and presents a theoretical framework for doing so. The paper first briefly reviews the psychological theory and research underlying cooperative learning. The paper uses data from a pilot ethnographic study of cooperative learning in a fourth-grade classroom to…

Effective rural education depends on active community involvement. This ethnographic case study examines three models of community organization as an explanation of how community action occurs. The three models are: (1) individuals interacting in formal and informal groups; (2) networks of "weak ties" effective for diffusing information and…

This bibliography is designed: (1) to bring information together on research on family roles in literacy acquisition and on parent involvement programs; and (2) to present a range of models, resources, and approaches that English family literacy program designers, curriculum developers, and teachers can use in developing their own programs. The…

The purpose of this report is to outline how a combined ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of an exemplary bilingual education program in the Navajo community of Rock Point may help rationally explain how community people have determined what they want from a bilingual program and what sort of issues they face to achieve these goals. After an…

An ethnographic study examined the sense of the social world as a natural order produced by the organizational members of one sales team at a New York media representation firm. Communication was observed and recorded over a ten-week period, and members of the sales team were interviewed during an additional two-week period. Results indicated that…

This book reports on a ten-year-old maintenance Chinese bilingual education program in a public school located at the heart of a Chinatown community in California. It uses a multilevel ethnographic approach, considering the classroom, the school, and the broader community. First covered are the ways that a bilingual education program is initiated,…

An ethnographic study of a primary and secondary Australian Catholic boys school--the Christian Brothers College (CBC)--examined the historical relationship between Catholic schools, Catholic religious formation, and social mobility in Australia. The methodology used includes classroom observation, interviews, participation in social and religious…

Although the complexities of the concept of audience in nonacademic settings are gradually being recognized, audience analysis continues to be viewed primarily as a cognitive, problem-solving activity. Grounded in decontextualizing research--such as protocol analysis--this approach to audience assumes that, to inform appropriate writing choices,…

This paper describes a procedure used to locate pretend play episodes in streams of play activity of 4- and 5-year-olds. A story grammar was used to compare pretend play episode activity with story construction. Participants were five girls and three boys attending the same preschool. Pretend play schemes and episodes were defined in terms of…

A study examined student-teacher writing conferences in a ninth grade English class to uncover what significance this form of instruction has both as a collaborative methodology and as a factor in individualizing the process of learning to write in the secondary school. Subjects included a successful ninth grade English teacher at a public high…

A study was conducted to construct measures of reading competencies that are frequently needed in an occupational environment and to describe the influence of the components of reading practice on these competencies based on the conceptual framework of ethnographic psychology. The reading practices of 25 electrical engineers and 30 electronic…

Several years ago, a coalition of Chicago civic groups met to determine the scope of the urban dropout problem and develop strategies for dealing with it. The resulting research program rejected both attrition and survey analysis approaches in favor of direct examination of all student records for three graduating classes (1982, 1983, and 1984)…