This article discusses the relation between narrating a story and experiencing a learning process--for both the research subjects and the researcher--as an inherent feature of narrative biographical research. It is argued that in order to do justice to the particularity, the interpretation and the agency of the research subjects and thus to the…

This conceptual essay examines the controversial idea of faith-based leadership without relying on traditional notions of conservative, essentialist theology. The essay challenges scholars as well as practitioners in educational leadership to grapple with the realities of an esoteric or spiritual existence that has a phenomenal impact on their…

In this paper the author would like to share a small section of text that emerged in the process of analyzing and synthesizing data from her self-study research into her role as a coordinator for special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream infant education in the UK. The section consists of three Imaginative Conjectures in which she re-envisions…

This article examines the interpretive practices and cultural texts that shape what teachers and students remember and forget during the annual observance of the King holiday in two second-grade classrooms. Drawing on data from an ethnographic case study of the curriculum in use and theory and research on collective memory, the author analyzes the…

Embodiment has become an important construct for those in disciplines and specialty areas concerned with the form and function of the human body. This article suggests that accounts of embodiment have collapsed into an exclusionary framework that locates culture and cognition on oppositional terms. For some scholars, embodiment represents the…

In this article, the author reflects on his participation in a project in democratic educational renewal in an inner-city high school in Cincinnati, Ohio in the 1990s. He frames the case study within a number of broader questions in democratic educational research and theory having to do with the need to construct narratives of hope without…

John Ogbu's work on "minority education" has spawned a number of interesting and useful debates in the US. Having been both an early admirer and critic of Ogbu's work, I reviewed his work in an "Anthropology and Education Quarterly" article. The present article reflects upon Ogbu's work and upon my scholarly engagement with that corpus over the…

This article offers analysis and critique of John Ogbu's last ethnography, titled "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb", in which he described a set of community forces contributing to the academic disengagement of African American youth. Its purposes are threefold: first, to briefly layout Ogbu's findings; second, to compare these to…

This article begins with a discussion of recent critiques of Fordham and Ogbu's argument on the "burden of acting white". These critiques point to the stereotypical and homogeneous characterization of the black peer group by Fordham and Ogbu, as well as their inattention to the ways in which schools relegate into the lower tracks those students…

This article contextualizes the work of the late educational anthropologist John Ogbu in terms of uniquely American narratives that have explanatory and motivational value for different segments of the US population. The narrative Ogbu championed has explanatory value among several educational researchers, and is consistent with an ethnic…

This article focuses on findings from a study involving 30 highly successful, low-income, African American public high school students. The students' gender-based experiences defy the traditional patterns of educational underachievement associated with this minority group. They challenge John Ogbu's influential notions of 'involuntary' minority…

In this paper, the author challenges Aguirre at two levels. He argues that Aguirre does not make effective use of his personal narrative to inform the experience of the Chicano Studies Center and Affirmative Action at his university. The author also points to his own experiences as a student and faculty member to underscore Aguirre's incomplete…

This essay responds to Professor Aguirre's article in this issue that explores through personal narrative the trials and tribulations of being a faculty member with an expertise in Chicana/o Studies. The author joins his exploration by introducing the structural disadvantages that Chicana/o Studies suffers as a field. She then expounds on what we…

Professor Aguirre's essay provides a strong argument for his thesis that the academy robs Chicana/o scholars of their presence and voice. However, he does not share much on how successful the agency of these scholars has been in opening the space needed for that presence, and what gains there have been in expressing their voice. The author reviews…

Jos Limn maintains that Professor Aguirres account may be construed as fundamentally a story of California, albeit one told from a Chicano perspective. It is based less on any red-blooded forms of racism and more on the Roycean, Protestant, individualistic, comedic Anglo California that, in its relentless optimisms and perpetual newness, simply…