This article explores how researchers adapt to disruptions that cost them access to their field sites, advancing a uniquely sociological perspective on the dynamics of flexibility and adaptation in qualitative methods. Through interviews with 31 ethnographers whose access was preempted or eliminated, I find that adaptation varied systematically…

This article explores questions of reflexivity, positionality, identity, and emotion within the process of ethnographic research. We reflect on our feelings of privilege and guilt in and through our ethnographic fieldwork and discuss the ways in which these experiences encouraged reflexive thinking and a crucial interrogation of the place of the…

This book brings an international group of writers together to offer an authoritative state-of-the-art review of, and critical reflection on, educational ethnography as it is being theorized and practiced today--from rural and remote settings to virtual and visual posts. It provides a definitive reference point and academic resource for those…

The work of John Furlong on school and classroom ethnography is located in its context and its achievements celebrated. The paper focuses on class, ethnicity and gender issues as it explores the changes and continuities in the ethnography of education over the 66-year period covered. The qualities of a good ethnographer are playfully compared to…

As today's youth is growing up in societies made more complicated by globalization, the argument grows for expanding the discussion about citizenship education. In increasingly multicultural and interconnected societies, young people are developing new civic attitudes as well as "attachments and identifications" as citizens within three…

This three-part article addresses the role of identity as transmitted by my mother and the influences on my life first as a teacher and then as researcher. This ethnography is based on interviews of my mother about her life as a political prisoner in Cuba and her influences on my identity. This article is divided into three acts that address…

Education in the United States was in a state of "crisis" at the time of the 1983 release of "A Nation at Risk," the landmark report on the US education reform. This was the time when the rising Japanese economy started threatening the post-war US economic dominance and conservative figures such as Ronald Reagan gained popular…

This article examines six years of ethnographic research in Robyn Davis's pre-kindergarten classroom in the USA. Using a theoretical framework to embed writing within a social semiotic that is multimodal and has social intent (Street, 2003), the authors show how children used interactions during writing to create various written products. Three…

In this article, Dyrness and Sepúlveda argue that in El Salvador, young people are participants in a diasporic social imaginary that connects them with Salvadorans and other Latinos in the United States--before they have ever left the country. The authors explore how this transnational relationship manifests in two school communities in San…

As im/migrant researchers of color working and living in the USA, we begin this article by discussing how our own transnational selves and research have created tensions with the normalized use of socially constructed and theorized categories and differences in US qualitative research practices. We theorize an alternative reflexive mode of…

The lack of empirical scholarship on professional development initiatives for teachers of English language learners (ELLs) in US schools has been repeatedly documented in educational research. The present dissertation project examines a professional development course specifically designed for K-12 teachers of ELLs. The course aims to foster the…

When the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched its $50 million digital media and learning initiative three years ago, the expectation was that research in this area would expand people's understanding of the impact of digital media and communications technologies on how young people will learn in the future. By the time the first…

The policy brief "Ethnographic Knowledge for Early Childhood" details the contributions of current ethnographic research in the area of early childhood education. The brief's main purpose is to demonstrate how ethnography (as a methodology) helps us better understand the context of early childhood programs, the types of settings and…

Two British authors reflect on the current state of qualitative research, viewed as a battlefield through roiling smoke. From a UK perspective they reflect on the perceived crisis in qualitative research in the United States. They also suggest that there are four important features that good qualitative research should rely on: problematizing…