This article analyzes illustrative classroom events documented during an ethnographic study of bilingual classrooms in a "high-achieving" school. Through a performativity lens that emphasizes the discursive constitution of subjectivities, I demonstrate how discourses around achievement and success in the current reform context exacerbated one…

On the basis of extensive research on university-community collaborative education projects in southern California and southern Sweden, this article proposes two roles and a research strategy and approach as elements essential to sustained collaboration. Recognition and fulfillment of the roles of "spider" and "firesoul," while "leading with the…

Examines preimmigration education of Mexican immigrants using an ethnographic case study of a rural Mexican primary school. Discusses the implications of a high-quality national curriculum and instructional methods emphasizing teacher direction, verbal interactivity, and group orientation for immigrant students in American schools. (FMW)

Examines the socialization process of physically challenged children mainstreamed in an elementary school program. Concludes that an open and flexible classroom environment encourages individual independence, adaptation, and acceptance. (FMW)

Examines the relationship between the development of authority and the voice in which it is expressed in ethnographic writing. Argues that ethnographic research provides a way of helping students gain the authority that comes from the inquiry process. (FMW)

Traces the development of Anglo-Saxon superiority theories from the nineteenth century onward and demonstrates their impact on social conditions in the southwest, specifically on school segregation in Santa Paula School District (California) from the 1920s to the present. (DM)

The author finds the Khmer refugee parents of children in Boston area schools to be relatively uninterested in the question of their children's education, following from a fatalistic outlook that distinguishes them from other Southeast Asian refugees, whose children are urged to succeed against all odds. (DM)