This article focuses on teachers' identity construction in the context of a "failing" inner-city high school. Framing teachers' student stories as narrative resources for solving both the practical and identity problems that confront them in an underresourced, inner-city school, the article argues that these stories can serve…

Few studies explore teachers' involvement in school feeding, questioning gendered implications within a feminine and feminized profession. Ethnographic data from one public high school in Metropolitan Buenos Aires suggest that teachers' efforts to address student hunger added new work roles: food advocates/activists, food managers, and…

This article explores the process and impact of women organizing for educational justice in Northern California by documenting the efforts of a committed group of mothers who sought to address the disproportionate underachievement of Latino and African American students within their city's high school. Using a combined methodology of…

A "native" Christian ethnographer finds religious education at this church-sponsored school to pursue two distinct, and occasionally conflicting, curricula: "love" and "purity." The curriculum of love draws on what Turner called liminality and communitas in an effort to promote spiritual "encounters with…

This article explores how we can better understand the language ideologies of teachers working with second language learners through narrative analysis. This analysis draws on ethnographic data collected in an urban high school with a predominant Latina/o population and nearly a quarter designated as English learners. This analysis illustrates how…

Increasing numbers of immigrant youth are coming of age within global cities that are characterized by growing inequalities and few opportunities for social mobility. These youth face numerous educational obstacles that complicate college and labor market access. This article draws from an ethnographic study of public high schools serving…

The unofficial "diversity curriculum" of an urban high school and how it is negotiated by prospective teachers during field experience and student-teaching experiences are examined. The school setting, including the people within it, communicate messages such as "who we are" and "how we do things here." The intermediary construct of institutional…

In this article, we consider the ways in which educational policies and institutions today enable or obstruct young people who are immigrant English-language learners as they seek to cross cultural and educational borders. Contrasting a class action suit in California protesting high stakes testing that will significantly limit graduation rates,…

This article presents a (post)anthropological framework for understanding adolescent coming-of-age in U.S. public high schools. Coming-of-age is conceived as a complex, fluid, seemingly contradictory process of identity formation and community integration in which adolescents representing diverse ethnic, racial, gender, and social class locations…

This yearlong ethnographic study of principals' leadership in Papua New Guinea high schools describes influences of imposing a bureaucratic school organization on principals' decision making in a communal society. Communal values of kinship relationships, "wantok" system, and "big men" leadership challenged principals' responsibility to uphold…

This article examines an incident between male student athletes within a locker room at a private school. The reaction of many in this school community to this incident reveals that "hazing" rituals were normally ignored or condoned by many of the parents, coaches, administrators, and teachers who were aware of them. These attitudes changed when…

As more U.S. youth claim "mixed" heritages, some adults are proposing to erase race words altogether from the nation's inequality analysis. Yet such proposals, as detailed ethnography shows, ignore the complex realities of continuing racialized practice. At an urban California high school in the 1990s, "mixed" youth strategically employed simple…

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.…

Describes the postoppositional identity work of marginalized, urban high school students whose oppositional identity work resulted in breakages with their worlds. One central student forged symbolic and social links, helping students construct true selves and express identities in ethical relations to others, and engendering a politics of…

Examined the shifting nature of the cultural practice of basketball as players moved from middle to high school play and related shifts in players' statistical evaluations linked to play. Observations of and interviews with African American basketball players indicated that the practice of basketball differed at the two levels of play…