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…

Theatre provides a unique set of conditions for the management of emotions. Drawing on participant observation from one repertory theater, three university productions, and interviews with stage actors, directors, and acting instructors, I conceptualize actors as privileged emotion managers. Actors access structural resources that enable their…

Rurality is a complex and contested term, with multiple notions and gazes amid calls for theoretical pluralism. In Australia, the spatial categories of "remote", "rural", "regional" and "urban" are applied to places that vary in their distance from an economic and political core and have differing population…

We are now at a point in higher education policy studies where we know that neoliberal discursive rationalities and practices are prevalent in the contemporary enterprise university, and we are beginning to get a sense of their impact on academic work and subjectivities. The article asserts that a more pressing question is how to powerfully and…

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…

This paper describes a youth-centered activist project with a group of young women in Brooklyn, NY, and the controversy surrounding it. In 1999 the young women created a neighborhood mural with anti-violence themes. Within 6 months of the mural's dedication, the mural was whitewashed by the corporate owner of the mural wall. Using content and…

This issue's scenario, To Participate or Not to Participate, describes an evaluator's shift in method from nonparticipant to participant observation. Although evaluation theorists differ on the extent to which methods decisions are ethical decisions (Morris, 1998), neither of the two commentators considers the methodological decision problematic;…

The author's examination of Indigenous Theology and the indigenous pastoral is based on several periods of research over the past ten years in both rural and urban areas of Oaxaca state in Mexico, including participant-observation in several different kinds of church-directed settings and activities, and extensive interviews with clergy and…

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 article argues in favour of a situated approach to understanding learning in practice at trade vocational school and at trade in vocational education. Boundary crossing is regarded as contributing to expansive situated learning by apprentices across trade vocational school and the trade. The purpose of the article is to show that the…

Responds in an ongoing dialogue with Peter Gronn about the need for self-critical inquirers who emphasize openness and skepticism in research methods and ideas. (MLF)

This paper reviews New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education reform agenda, "Children first", in the light of organizational theory. I argue that this reform agenda reflects both coercive and mimetic isomorphism, as Bloomberg uses mayoral control to apply business concepts and practices to New York City's public school system.…

Describes the participant-observation technique for data collection and proposes its usefulness as a research methodology in library science. Procedural steps are outlined and suggestions are offered for successful completion of participant-observation research. (10 references) (Author/MES)