Shared Leadership in a Community Theater Group: Filling the Leadership Role

In contrast to research in which an individual leader is assigned or expected to emerge, musical theater productions provide an opportunity to explore how leadership is shared among the director, assistant director, music director, choreographer, and stage manager in a naturally occurring group. This ethnographic study explores how one community theater group managed the sharing of leadership roles when the primary director assumed a passive or ineffective role. The study explores the communication and affective responses of the secondary leaders and cast members when they perceived that the primary leadership failed to function and then examines how secondary leaders and cast members communicated to share the leadership to produce successful theatrical performances. The results have implications for other groups with shared leadership structures.     

Critical Complete-Member Ethnography: Theorizing Dialectics of Consensus and Conflict in Intracultural Communication

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on the critical potential of complete-member ethnography (CME) through a retrospective and methodological exploration of a 2004 ethnographic project. I offer my provisionary theorization of critical CME (CCME) by reworking data and experimenting with CCME writing. CCME is an innovative intracultural praxis which engages in and facilitates social justice and cultural reform through its dialectical and highly personalized communication theorization. I draw from three ethnographic traditions: ethnography of communication, critical ethnography, and autoethnography to theorize both consensual and conflictual aspects of CCME as dialectics. Implications for identity investments are discussed.     

Space Making: Chinese Transnationalism on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands

Abstract

As the U.S.-Mexico border becomes more diverse and militantly guarded, interactions between various cultural groups grow more frequent and convoluted. This article describes the ways in which a group of Chinese transnationalists as recent arrivals (re)construct the meanings of El Paso in quotidian interactions. Recurrent themes on the ways in which participants constructed El Paso as an unauthentic American space are discussed. I argue that spatial identities are products of various forces and further reconceptualize the natural connections between place, people, and culture.     

Constructive readings of interactive episodes: examining ethics in physical education from a social constructionist perspective

In this paper we illustrate how ways of thinking about ethics are tied up with sport and physical education practice and introduce an alternative approach that can help to develop ethical pedagogies. We begin by locating socio-moral education in physical education within historical and contemporary pedagogical scholarship. Our argument is that the work of today's physical educators is still shaped by claims that were made about school sport in the nineteenth century and that sport scholars have long had difficulties proving these claims empirically. Rather than search for data that can confirm or refute claims of moral learning, we examine how incidents related to moral behaviour occur during physical education lessons. To do this we draw on data from an ethnographic investigation of a school in North Western Switzerland. Specifically, we present three episodes of interaction in three different physical education lessons. To make sense of these episodes, we introduce a social constructionist perspective. The main assumptions of this perspective are: (1) meanings are created through dialogue and consensus and are context-relative; (2) interactions between people are joint accomplishments; and (3) contexts affect how people interact with one another. Equipped with a constructionist framework, we then inspect the interactive episodes more closely. We include brief discussions of how constructionist understandings might inform ethics pedagogies in the future, suggesting that practitioners should be cautious of universal understandings of ethics, consider pupils as members of communities that are held together by shared practices, provide space for pupils to position themselves differently during lessons and, finally, account for contextual factors when evaluating pupils’ actions.     

Ethnographic methods in academic libraries: A review

Research in academic libraries has recently seen an increase in the use of ethnographic-based methods to collect data. Primarily used to learn about library users and their interaction with spaces and resources, the methods are proving particularly useful to academic libraries. The data ethnographic methods retrieve is rich, context specific, and often difficult to collect via other methods. This review provides an overview of research demonstrating how ethnography can be applied to learn about a variety of issues in academic libraries, ranging from space use to a way of teaching new students about library resources and facilities.     

‘Our surgeons want this to be short and simple’: practices of in-hospital medication review as coordinated sociomaterial actions

ABSTRACT

Medication review, a systematic assessment of a patient’s medicines by a health care professional, is intended to prevent medication-related harms. A critical element of medication review concerns whether medication review is conducted in a coordinated way. This article draws from a case example of implementing medication review in two surgical wards of a Swedish regional hospital and aims to analyse how medication review is being accomplished with respect to the coordination of its actions. Using a practice-based ethnographic approach, we present several coordination mechanisms by illustrating how practices are connected to materials involved in medication review. Also, we show how common orientations, ends, and understandings expressed in different medication review practices contribute to the coordination of the practices. In conclusion, this article highlights the complexity of establishing and sustaining medication review as a coordinated practice in routine health care. By closely examining sociomaterial connections, this article sheds new light on the neglected issue of artefacts and arrangements in constituting and transforming a highly complex medication practice.     

Structure, agency, and the development of students’ identities as learners

This paper focuses on the role of dominant school discourses in structuring how students position themselves and others relative to a community centered on science. The study was conducted in a diverse, eighth grade classroom in an urban magnet school. I argue that dominant discourses portray a limited view of available subject positions, in that the purpose of learning science is associated with a dichotomous view of people as being either college-bound or not. I explore how these limited subject positions can pose contradictions with some students’ interests, constrain students’ visions of possibilities, exacerbate disadvantages based on race and class, and interfere with students acquiring identities as science learners. However, there are also possibilities for resistance, agency and self-definition through students’ talk. Stacy Olitskycurrently works as a researcher for the Math and Science Partnership of Greater Philadelphia and is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a doctoral degree in Education and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. She has spent the past several years working on a longitudinal, ethnographic study of science education in an urban magnet school. Her research interests include the relationship of identity and science learning, interaction rituals in classrooms, in-field and out-of-field science teaching, the influence of social capital and cultural capital on science learning, activity theory and classroom change, and students’ experiences with school choice.     

Is RE still not working? Reflections on the Does RE Work? project 5 years on

Abstract

The ‘Does RE Work?’ project, part of the AHRC/ESRC Religion & Society Programme, ran from 2007 to 2011. Drawing on textual analysis, ethnographic case studies and practitioner enquiry, the study identified core confusions as to the purposes and entailments of Religious Education as practised across the jurisdictions of the UK. This paper reflects on key developments in the area of religion and schools under the Coalition and Conservative governments in the light of the key findings of the project. While progress has been made towards a shared conception of the meaning and purpose of the subject, confusion persists as to the contested status of RE as a rigorous subject in the academic humanities. The paper makes recommendations with regard to the place of RE in a climate of increased interest and inspection of civic, personal and religious values and their place across the curriculum.     

人种志在现代远程教育研究中的应用

人种志在远程教育研究中有着20多年的历史，从90年代开始，人种志越来越成为博士生从事现代远程教育研究的主要方法之一。本文分为五个部分：第一部分介绍人种志的含义；第二部分描述人种志在远程教育研究中的现状；第三部分叙述人种志研究的八个方面的特征；第四部分阐述人种志研究的七个阶段；最后一部分综合分析人种志资料分析常用的计算机软件。最后，作者提出，我国需要开发中文的定性资料分析的计算机软件，以提高我国教育工作者进行定性研究的实效性。     

‘Study like Italians do’ as a migration project: field research in Togo

In this article we present ethnographic research conducted on students taking an Italian language and culture course in Lomé, the capital of Togo. We interacted with the students and participated in their school days. In addition to the interviews, we turned to Focus Groups in order to investigate certain crucial issues. Our research reinforces the idea that migration is a strategy of living, even before surviving, thanks to which many students from West Africa can achieve their desire to learn and explore the world and gain access to higher quality education. We noted the importance of the preparatory phase, the process by which students acquire different skills needed to deal with the migration experience. ‘Study like Italians do’ also anticipates the scenario of the migration in the host country, which influences the expectations and behaviour that students will implement once they arrive in Italy.