Given contemporary recognition of how racialized micro-interactions and the embedded distortions of marginalized and minoritized folk compound over time to produce and reify educational stratification and inequality, this article is an opportunity to think more deliberately about how education researchers can better delineate empirically and…

The paper provides a distillation of findings emerging from an ongoing series of investigations of the research practices of academics in a university context to foreground the creativity in our engagements with information. The empirical research involved an ethnographic exploration of the scholarly practices of two scholars engaged in the…

Introduction: This paper reports on an extensive research project which aimed at exploring information sharing activities in a scholarly context. The paper presents and synthesises findings from a literature review and three qualitative case studies. The empirical setting is a geographically distributed Nordic network of design scholars. Method:…

Autoethnography is adopted as the procedure and orientation for this PhD study which aims to explore the cultural identity of the Chinese families and its influences on their children's mathematics learning. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, readers are invited to travel with the researcher a journey in which she explores her diasporic…

The authors conducted an ethnography of a university queer cultural center's role on campus and in the surrounding community. The dataset included participant observation, in-depth interviews, and artifacts. The authors present a review of LGBTQA [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, ally, and questioning] issues in higher education, heterosexual…

Based on personal experiences in conducting intensive ethnographic fieldwork, the social, emotional, and personal aspects of fieldwork that are often neglected in the literature are considered. The fieldwork involved observations within five diverse secondary schools during a 2-year period in conjunction with a project on microcomputer…

Ethnographic methods can be a valuable supplement to our understanding of the limits and possibilities of social science research by addressing the question of subjectivity directly. When ethnographers enter a social situation, they explain themselves and participants see them primarily in the role of fieldworker. But field researchers also have…

An educational researcher describes and reflects on a qualitative research project she conducted, focusing on her positioning, neutrality, and objectivity throughout the research process and during subsequent data analysis. The research took place in a K-12 school in a remote rural New Zealand community inhabited by Maori, 1970s…

The harm that can transpire during and after the fieldwork phase of research is examined, and the ethical obligations of qualitative researchers to respond are explored. Recognition that research has the potential to harm has led the research community to develop philosophical guidelines for ethical conduct. Qualitative researchers have also…

Interviewing has been a recognized mainstay of ethnographic fieldwork for more than 100 years. Coupled with participant observation, it was taken to be the complete corpus of anthropological and sociological inquiry activity. Although the repertoire of fieldwork inquirers has grown, interviewing remains a primary data collection technique,…

This paper presents some insights about the rigors of ethnographic fieldwork gained in the conduct of an ethnographic study of the Muscogee people of Oklahoma (called "Creek" by European settlers). The difficulties and issues discussed include: (1) gaining entry; (2) selection of key informants; (3) ways informants tested the investigator; (4)…

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…

The data reported here were gathered in three ethnographic studies in different research settings: a single school, school district, and research center/school district team. These longitudinal studies incorporated the use of ethnography for purposes of collecting data about classroom teachers, principals, staff developers, central office…

Ethnographers find themselves among a family of researchers referred to as naturalists. This rather diverse family conducts research described by turns as qualitative, participant observational, case study, symbolic interactionist, phenomenological, constructivist, and interpretive. The focus of the ethnographer's inquiry is on the mundane,…

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…