Ralph LaRossa's (2012) thoughtful piece suggested that qualitative researchers' self-awareness (and clear articulation) of their conceptual and empirical goals can help their manuscripts in many ways, including during the review process. If authors self-consciously embrace particular orientations, then it will be easier for reviewers to evaluate…

This article responds to Wright and Nelson's (1995) call for a "creative synthesis" of participant observation and participatory research, which may allow the limitations of both methods to be addressed. It does so by reflecting on the experience of doing long-term research both with and on young Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. Although…

The English Geography National Curriculum encourages primary teachers to focus on similarities and differences when teaching distant places. The issues this raises are particularly acute when teaching geography in the context of the Global South. In this article I argue that comparisons based on object-based thinking can lead to views of the…

In this essay I reflect on the ethical challenges of ethnographic fieldwork I personally experienced in a female gambling study. By assuming a covert research role, I was able to observe natural occurrences of female gambling activities but unable to make peace with disturbing feelings of my research concealment. By making my study overt, I was…

Large-scale research projects, conducted in a cross-European context, are increasingly attractive to educational researchers and policy-makers. However, this form of comparative research across cultures brings problems concerning the standardization of data collection and analysis, particularly where ethnographic research is concerned, as it…

This essay is a history of the process of completing an ethnographic study in a child care setting. It presents reflections on entering the field site, keeping field notes, and analyzing data. An exploratory study of a group of preschool children led to the selection of qualitative methods and clarified the theoretical basis for research. In…

This article draws on 3 ethnographic and participant observation studies of African American parents and adults from 3 northern California communities. Although studies have shown that African American parents hold the same folk theories about mathematics as other parents, stressing it as an important school subject, few studies have sought to…

A year-and-a-half of ethnographic fieldwork in a primarily African-American neighborhood suggests that praxis and ethnographic methods can be stirred together to produce empowering literacy artifacts and discourse in the community. Originally a Marxist notion, praxis requires researchers to understand how people characterize their own situations…

Two education professors conducting research on the curriculum planning at a high school near Boise (Idaho) found that their status as observer and/or participant in discussions among teachers, administrators and parents made things more difficult. Usually in ethnography it is assumed that the hard part is to achieve insider status--to be accepted…

A composition scholar conducted a study of peer response groups in a freshmen composition course to determine what leads to conflict among students in these groups. In the course of her study, however, she found herself deeply perplexed by conflicting roles she had to play as a participant/observer. The ethnographer as a participant/observer is,…

This book describes several projects addressing experiences as women educators in defining the positional perspectives related to the understanding and reconceptualization of teaching and curriculum. Each project faces the dilemma of imposition in the authors' work with student teachers, teenage mothers, children of color, community members, and…

Parallels in the thinking of Gloria Anzaldua as expressed in her work "Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza" (1987) about "mestiza" consciousness and the tasks of critical ethnography are explored. Ethnography, as it shifts toward the new paradigm of critical ethnography, can learn much from the consciousness Anzaldua…

The focus of this paper is on women with respect to three themes: the reasons why women are attracted to ethnographic research, the problems they may encounter in making this choice, and the prospects for women researchers to influence the future direction of educational research. Four interrelated psychological aspects seem to attract women to…

Points out the incoherence of disciplinary assumptions within the field of composition regarding the research paper. Discusses writing technologies of the research paper, and the juncture between research and composition. Proposes that an ethnographic model would provide students with tools to work in the territory between the scientific model of…

Based on personal ethnographic experience of "becoming the phenomenon" of migrant laborer in Canada's postsecondary education system, critically examines three anthropological perspectives--the neoclassical, the historical structuralist, and the neo-Marxist--on labor migration. Argues that both migrant laborers and sessional lecturers…