Text messaging in the school lives of American high school girls

Digital technologies open new windows for ethnographic explorations of cultural experiences. In this paper, we examine text messaging among academically talented teenage girls of colour at three US urban high schools. Texting introduced a new communication modality into the girls’ lives and created a space for new discourses mediating their participation in school. We draw on the concept of ‘serious play’ to reveal the paradoxical nature of the girls’ texting. At each school, distinct text-messaged discourses emerged – with implications for ethnographic studies of discourse and young people’s commitments to schooling.     

The Application of a Multiple Measurement Approach to Investigate the Effects of a Dance Program on Educable Mentally Retarded Adolescents

Abstract

Little evidence exists to assess the effects of dance training on special populations. Research in this field has relied on pretest-posttest methods for gathering data. While such data gathering methods may be appropriate for particular research problems, alone they may be inadequate for broad-based, exploratory investigations of programs and effects. The present study is an example of a multiple measurement approach that uses eight measurements, in combination, to answer four research questions regarding the physical and social effects that occur when a group of educable mentally retarded adolescents is exposed to a 10-week dance program. The findings revealed that four students showed improvement in both social and physical behaviors, seven students showed improvement in either social or physical behaviors, and two students showed no improvement. There was no evidence of a “transfer effect” due to participation in the program, and some students' behaviors were affected by external factors. The authors found the approach useful for identifying multiple effects and generating hypotheses for further study.     

HAMMERS AND SAWS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

This article examines different conceptions of causation and their implications for understanding educational phenomena and conducting educational research. Specifically, I discuss four research designs for pursuing questions about causation in education. Two of these research designs take a variance approach to causation (that is, they attempt to show correlations between earlier events and subsequent ones), while the other two take a process approach (that is, they attempt to show a demonstrable sequence of events by which one variable flows into or leads to another). The point of the discussion is to illustrate, first, their respective strengths and, second, their necessary interdependence. Ultimately, I argue that just as both hammers and saws are needed to build a good house, both variance and process approaches are needed to build a good understanding of causation in education.     

Globalization and science education in a community-based after-school program

What are the effects of globalization and how are these manifested in local communities and in the learning of science there? These questions are unpacked within one local community in the United States, a place called “Uptown” where I examine the educational opportunities and pathways in science that are available for low-income Black American girls. The data comes from eight years of work both as an after-school science education program director and researcher in Uptown. The results suggest that globalization is taking hold, both in the social and economic circumstances of the community and in the everyday lives of the girls who live there. Further, there is possible evidence of globalization in the micro-dynamics of the after-school program. Yet opportunities for science education that could prepare the girls and their community for a globalizing world lag far behind.     

Boundaries and selves in the making of ‘science’

Relying on ideas from practice theory and critical autobiography, I use this article first to tell, and then to analyse, a story about trying to publish a book whose contents are in some ways marginal to what is normally considered science or science education. During the publishing process, what counts as science got tangled up with what counts as “credible” science, “marketable” literature, and academic competence. As a result, a book and a person (me) dedicated to expanding the boundaries of science also became contributors to those very same boundaries.     

A matter of scale: multi-scale ethnographic research on education in the United States

ABSTRACT

In recent years, cultural anthropologists conducting educational ethnographies in the US have pursued some new methodological approaches. These new approaches can be attributed to advances in cultural theory, evolving norms of research practice, and the affordances of new technologies. In this article, I review three such approaches under the rubric ‘multi-scale ethnography’. Each approach responds to the desire to understand cultural forms that extend beyond single sites and the capabilities of single researchers; each pursues cultural forms that ‘travel’ across spaces, levels, and times. The three approaches are multi-sited ethnography, meta-ethnography, and comparative case study. I view these approaches not as replacements for older forms of ethnography but as complements that extend the contextualisation and generalisability of traditional ethnography.     

The Paradox of Peer Review: Admitting too Much or Allowing too Little?

Peer review – the means by which one's equals assess the quality of one's scholarly work – has been used to determine academic merit for more than three centuries. Although the results of academic peer reviews are frequently challenged, peer review continues to be a commonplace of academic life. In the present scholarship climate, challenges to peer review come primarily from two sides. On one side there are those who believe that high academic standards are not being upheld by peer review panels, thus admitting weak proposals, people, programs, and articles. On the other side there are those who believe that review panels uphold conventional standards, thus disqualifying innovative projects and worthy people with diverse perspectives. In this article, I take up these two challenges. Together, they reveal a paradox of the current system of peer review: Both sides are right. And, the paradox has led to increased fragmentation within the field of educational research. Yet, despite the limitations of peer review, no viable alternatives exist. Thus, I will argue that the best we can do is to re-consider what we mean by merit in educational research, and to train new educational researchers in ways that expand their ability to judge merit broadly.     

The emergent genre of campaign e-mail in the 2008 presidential nomination campaign

This study describes e-mail use in the 2008 U.S. presidential nomination campaigns. A content analysis and rhetorical analysis of over 1,400 e-mails from the primary season of that campaign reveal evidence of typification. Consistent practices and shared purposes are evident in the campaign e-mails, along with shared and individual variations indicating an emergent communicative form. In-group identification pairs with interactive, supporter behaviors to make up the dominant constellations-of-practice within this corpus.     

Socially constructed readiness for school

Educational researchers, early childhood educators, and parents often think of readiness for school as a measurable child characteristic. This ignores the social process by which readiness is used to group, rank, and compare children and the variability in the term's use from community to community. This study proposes that readiness for school should be conceived as being “socially constructed.” Using a conceptual framework based on Vygotskian theory and cultural anthropology, we develop the concept of “activity setting” as a social process in which cognitive processes and meaning structures develop. The emerging meaning of readiness is examined by using an activity‐setting analysis in three different communities and kindergarten settings.     

Addressing underrepresentation of young women of color in engineering and computing through the lens of sociocultural theory

Cultural Studies of Science Education - In the past several decades, women have made considerable progress toward gender equity in the USA, but women in general and women of color in particular...