This study uses an ecological framework to map one Japanese child's transition between elementary school life in the United States and Japan. I privilege the child's perspective while weaving in parent and teacher views, as well as observation and document data. Implicit and explicit expectations in the focal student's classrooms…

This article examines the significance of the "struggling reader" identity on students' classroom experiences. Drawing upon sociocultural theories of literacy, performance theories of education, and psychosocial qualities of identity, I argue that such an identity is felt, lived, and embodied throughout students' daily…

Boys' underachievement and oppositional behavior in school has for a long time been the target of various public debates. Drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork in two Swedish secondary schools, this article explores how the influential theory of boys' anti-school culture can be interpreted as a master narrative that is reproduced,…

This article presents a critical race theory analysis of teachers' and students' language policy negotiation. It draws on an ethnographic study in a high-school English as a Second Language (ESL) program. Results demonstrate how race-language processes create conditions that traumatize immigrant and bilingual youth of color through…

Consistent with research conducted by George Spindler 60 years ago, teachers continue to perceive groups of students, typically students that differ from the teacher, as less capable of accomplishing meaningful tasks, belonging and contributing to social groups, and engaging actively in challenging work. The bias is especially great for students…

Drawn from a two-year critical ethnography, the author explores how Mexican-origin students in a U.S. southwest charter high school resisted Spanish heritage language instruction. Resistance was rooted in students' perception that their teacher unfairly characterized their linguistic and social identities. Students also constructed their…

This article investigates how Moroccan public high-school students experience religious pedagogy. Probing the linguistic ideology that underpins their religious training, the article exposes the ambiguities inherent in educational Arabization, a project set on safeguarding the state's sacredness while mediating an agenda of indigenous…

This article examines how students and teachers at an urban public high school embodied and understood various social categories of difference. Although ascriptions and experiences of racial and gender identities varied, these identities were often viewed as biological in origin and static in nature. The complexities and contradictions evident in…

This essay describes the process of Hymesian monitoring, a collaborative effort to understand voice in education, so crucial in Hymes's later work. A report of ethnographic monitoring in 1970s Philadelphia and a recent collaborative project in the Caribbean demonstrate how one can work from the voice of the pupil, through that of the analyst…

Research suggests that Cambodian students often endure conflicting ethnic stereotypes from larger society and their school and communities. We examine the ways in which Cambodian youth negotiated their ethnic identities in response to these stereotypes and argue that Cambodian students adopted, rejected, and affirmed certain ethnic identities in…

This article explores the formation of citizenship as social practice in a school in El Alto, Bolivia. I examine interactions between "banking" forms of education, students' responses, and embodied practices of belonging and political agency, and argue that the seemingly passive forms of knowledge transmission so criticized by critical pedagogy…

In this article, I examine how black students construct their racial and achievement self-concepts in a predominantly white high school to enact a black achiever identity. By listening to these students talk about the importance of race and achievement to their lives, I came to understand how racialized the task of achieving was for them even…

This article analyzes the process of youth political activism and development by drawing on ethnographic research on Asian and Pacific Islander youth activists. Young people revealed that collective action begins with a critical analysis of their lived experiences with inequalities. Their actions also involved oppositional consciousness that was…

In this article, I reflect on the strange career of the "burden of "acting White"" since it attracted widespread popular and academic attention over 20 years ago. I begin by noting that my original definition of "the burden of "acting White"" should not be confused with a prominent misconception of the problem as the "fear" of "acting White." I…

This study examines how a curriculum that aimed to instill in students a way of solving their everyday social problems instead became a site for replaying students' understandings of solutions approved by teachers and thus was limited in shaping their subjectivities. We draw on research in the ethnography of speaking, particularly in school…