Reviews two books on the education of Hispanic American students, "Personas Mexicanas: Chicano High Schoolers in Los Angeles" (James Diego Vigil) and "The Struggle of Latino/Latina University Students: In Search of a Liberating Education" (Felix M. Padilla). Both books provide ways to view barriers to education from the perspective of insiders.…

Reviews four books that contextually examine definitions of childhood and adolescence: "Peer Power: Preadolescent Culture and Identity" (Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler); "Angels' Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and Rhetorics of the Everyday" (Ralph Cintron); "Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers" (Niobe Way); and "At Home in…

The three books reviewed continue the time-honored tradition of observing life in schools. Each book offers a different perspective on this topic and provides stimulating ideas about how collaboration between school personnel and academic researchers can be accomplished. Each also raises questions about the meaning of doing ethnographic research.…

The essays in this section offer different possibilities and prospects for first-time fieldwork and make a strong case for directly supervised early fieldwork that includes peer collaboration and individual activity. (SLD)

The theoretical insight and ethnographic rigor of this collection of essays from participants at Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas (DIE) of the National Polytechnic Institute about the role of the public school in Mexican social and political life promote understanding of educational processes in different contexts, including rural and…

The heuristic value of Chilcott's essay lies less in its support for structural functionalism and more in its concern to reexamine theory in the work of earlier educational anthropologists for what earlier theories and practices can add to current research. (SLD)

Three recent books from different contexts bring new attention to the issues of race and education in the United States. These books are helpful to those considering the reasons for the underachievement of African-American students in the United States at the end of the 20th century. (SLD)

Explores the analogy of the researcher as fortune teller and the parallels between research histories and horoscopes and discusses the tension between what the subject is and what he or she is imagined to be by others. (SLD)

Explores ways teacher educators can create learning spaces in their classrooms that may initiate explorations of self, beliefs, ideologies, and practice that embrace the diversity of all students. (SLD)

Reviews the contributions of G. Spindler and L. Spindler to anthropology in "The American Cultural Dialogue and Its Transmission" (Falmer Press, 1990), "Interpretive Ethnography and Education: At Home and Abroad" (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1987), and "Education and Cultural Process: Anthropological Approaches" (Waveland Press, 1987). (SLD)

Responds to "Identity, Metamorphosis, and Ethnographic Research: What Kind of Story Is Ways with Words?" by Suzanne deCastell and Tom Walker (1991). Describes the author's reaction to "Ways with Words--Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms" by Shirley Brice Heath (1983). (SLD)

Discusses various responses to the author's book "Ways with Words--Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms" (1983). Describes how these reactions have led the author to see things in the work that she had not seen before. Strengths and weaknesses of the book she identifies have implications for the conduct of future ethnographic…

Reviews by Margaret A. Gibson (1988) and by Margaret A. Gibson and John U. Ogbu, Eds. (1991). These two books contribute significantly to theories of minority school success and failure in plural societies. Both distinguish between immigrant and involuntary minority groups, and attribute differing degrees of academic success to the cultural models…