This paper addresses the fact that in spite of the descriptive and well-intentioned ambitions of much sociolinguistic-ethnographic research, members of studied groups often continue to interpret such research as a largely vertically organized socio-political activity that communicates a prescriptive social and linguistic normativity the researcher…

Ethnographic fieldwork is subject to a number of tensions regarding the position of the researcher. Traditionally, these are discussed from a methodological perspective, and draw attention to issues such as "objectivity" of the research and the supposed need for "distance" in the process of knowledge-building. Approaching the…

While British educational researchers have given considerable attention to issues of racism, little attention has been given to how pupils themselves perceive differential teacher treatment and how such views relate to pupils' claims of teacher racism and racial discrimination. This article employs ethnographic data gathered from one English and…