The growing interest in the anthropological approach to educational research raises some issues about the nature of educational anthropology and traditional educational research. The nature of these two methods of inquiry is different in that anthropology demands that the researcher use the field as the bases for theoretical, methodological, and…

An example of how quantitative research methods and qualitative methods can complement each other in the service of inquiring into classroom learning environments. (Author/MLF)

Posits the need for a study of language, equivalent to linguistic ethnography, addressed to institutions in our own society, such as education. Discusses the problems and implications of this type of language study in relation to our own cultural views on language and the role of language in education. (Author/GC)

Analyzes nine ethnographic educational evaluation studies and shows how the theories chosen resulted from a negotiation of values among three participant groups: evaluators, funders, and practitioners. The studies reveal that the funder-evaluator relationship can become explosive when value differences are pronounced. Therefore, the evaluator…

Evaluates several recent models designed for improving formal and nonformal education in developing countries. Most are explanatory rather than process models and have little value in developing, maintaining, and evaluating educational programs for development. Recommends the Hutchens model which includes most of the variables considered in a…

Provides background to the Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education seminar held in February 1985. The problem, according to the author, is how to get status for adult nonformal education when status traditionally is awarded by the universities that promote formal education. (CH)

Comments on the cross-cultural research reported in the two preceding articles on comparisons of a German and American school and Dutch and Israeli teachers. Supports cross-national comparisons of school culture as an enlightening element of school reform. (LHW)

Sees Dobbert et al's model of cultural transmission (this issue) as generalizing, structural, mechanical, predetermined, formal, digital, and etic. Posits an alternative approach that is idiographic, processual, organic, open, nonformal, analogical, and attentive to emic data. Argues that the Dobbert model accounts inadequately for the implicit,…

Argues that ethnography, because of its holistic, cross-cultural perspective, provides an inquiry process by which open-ended questions can be asked that will result in new insights about American schooling. Discusses why traditional ethnography is inadequate to the study of schools and sketches first steps of the field work inquiry process. (CMG)

Employing their own version of the scientific method, educational researchers skirt the observation of the phenomenon under investigation and proceed directly to its quantification. The lack of impressive results suggests that an alternate research paradigm, the observation of human behavior in natural settings, is often advisable. (Author)

Using an evaluation of the Teacher Corps as a case study, discusses the value of ethnographic studies in policy research and the types of policy statements that emerge from such studies. (ST)

Presented are four possible content bases for art programs, with an expanded discussion of one of them--the anthropological base, which is described as the study of artistic origins. (KC)

Presents an interpretive text which functions as a report of the author's personal engagements with literary fiction and with philosophical, theoretical, and historical writings. Provides a theoretical and historical overview of literary anthropology as a research method. Concludes with a discussion of what literacy anthropological methods might…

This essay, based on field observation and interviews centered in California, examines the aims and activities of both school ethnographers and school administrators, concluding that the methods and resources of the former could greatly benefit the latter. (DM)

Introduces a section in which contributors are invited to comment on the future of scholarship published in "Anthropology & Education." The future work of educational anthropology calls for the application of past and current research in the schools. (SLD)