Originally published in 1992, this Asian-authored book presents a cultural description and interpretation of American high school adolescent life and ethos, based on anthropological fieldwork in a semi-rural school and its surrounding community in Oregon. It combines a realistic account of late 1980s adolescent culture and a confessional tale of the Asian ethnographer’s fieldwork experiences among American youngsters. The three main parts of the book focus on a portrayal of adolescent daily life, an interpretation of these young people’s cultural values and ideals, and a reflection on the ethnographer’s fieldwork experiences respectively. Part 1, Adolescent Life, includes five chapters presenting a brief version of a key informant life history, a profile of the school, a portrait of the community, a sketch of a typical school day, and adolescent life out of school. Divided into four chapters, Part 2, Adolescent Ethos, identifies three dimensions of adolescent ethos and analyzes dynamics between the dimensions and reflecting ideals. The last chapter of this part, ‘The Duality of Ideals’ discusses how adolescents negotiated themselves in a complicated web of various ideals pressing on them. Part 3, Doing Ethnography, reports procedural and personal aspects of doing ethnographic research in two separate chapters. The former discusses each step from locating a field to writing an ethnography; the latter describes personal feelings and scholarly thoughts which occurred during and after fieldwork. Adopting the most inconspicuous, unobtrusive form of research methods (she even dressed like them and acted with and among them), the ethnographer tried to listen to the young people’s voices, peek into their lives from outside, and look out at the world through their eyes.

The authors have focused this book on the serious, beginning, qualitative researcher - theoretically rigorous, yet with an understandable perspective.; The book has three main features. First, it provides a strong theoretical base for the understanding of competing research paradigms. Secondly, it features a "methods" section consistent with the non-linear nature of naturalistic inquiry, yet it allows the beginner to see direction. Thirdly, the authors include examples of actual research studies conducted (and completed) in a single year.

Theorizing Women and Leadership: New Insights and Contributions from Multiple Perspectives is the fifth volume in the Women and Leadership: Research, Theory, and Practice series. This cross?disciplinary series, from the International Leadership Association, enhances leadership knowledge and improves leadership development of women around the world. The purpose of this volume is to provide a forum for women to theorize about women’s leadership in multiple ways and in multiple contexts. Theorizing has been a viewed as a gendered activity (Swedberg, 2014), and this series of chapters seeks to upend that imbalance. The chapters are written by women who represent multiple disciplines, cultures, races, and subject positions. The diversity extends into research paradigm and method, and the chapters combine to illuminate the multiple ways of knowing about and being a woman leader. Twenty?first century leadership scholars acknowledge the importance of context, and many are considering post?heroic leadership models based on relationships rather than traits. This volume contributes to this discussion by offering a diverse array of perspectives and ways of knowing about leadership and leading. The purpose of the volume is to provide readers with not only interesting new ideas about women and leadership, but also to highlight the diverse epistemologies that can contribute to theorizing about women leaders. Some chapters represent typical social scientific practices and processes, while others represent newer knowledge forms and ways of knowing. The volume contributors adopt various epistemological positions, ranging from objective researcher to embedded co?participant. The chapters link their new findings to existing empirical or conceptual work and illustrate how the findings extend, amend, contradict, or confirm existing research. The diversity of the chapters is one of the volume’s strengths because it illuminates the multiple ways that leadership theory for women can be advanced. Typically, research based on a realist perspective is more valued in the academy. This perspective has indeed generated robust information about leadership in general and women’s leadership in particular. However, readers of this volume are offered an opportunity to explore multiple ways of knowing, different ways of researching, and are invited to de?center researcher objectivity. The authors of the chapters offer conceptual and empirical findings, illuminate multiple and alternative research practices, and in the end suggest future directions for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed?methods research.

This eminently readable book, poignant and humorous, quickly draws the reader into the scholastic world of high school students. Based on classroom observation and over 100 interviews, this study is a fascinating look at the challenges in getting middle-class adolescents to engage with their high school education. They Always Test Us On Things We Haven't Read offers a refreshing perspective on the mainstream American high school experience. It sends a powerful message to those interested in making curriculum more interesting and engaging. The book will appeal largely to teachers, but the clarity and depth of the text also make it valuable for anyone interested in school reform.

In this study of the school system of an Indiana town, Ellen Brantlinger studies educational expectations within segments of the middle class that have fairly high levels of attainment. Building on her findings, she examines the relationship between class structure and educational success. This book asserts the need to look beyond poor peoples' values and aspirations--and rather to consider the values of dominant groups--to explain class stratification and educational outcomes.

It sounds like a paradox: How do you engage in autoethnography collaboratively? Heewon Chang, Faith Ngunjiri, and Kathy-Ann Hernandez break new ground on this blossoming new array of research models, collectively labeled Collaborative Autoethnography. Their book serves as a practical guide by providing you with a variety of data collection, analytic, and writing techniques to conduct collaborative projects. It also answers your questions about the bigger picture: What advantages does a collaborative approach offer to autoethnography? What are some of the methodological, ethical, and interpersonal challenges you’ll encounter along the way? Model collaborative autoethnographies and writing prompts are included in the appendixes. This exceptional, in-depth resource will help you explore this exciting new frontier in qualitative methods.

Based on an ethnographic study, this book explores the cultural experiences of a group of Irish 6th year girls. Facing the high stakes Leaving Certificate examinations while on the cusp of adulthood, this study contributes to the agency-structure debate from a feminist perspective. Findings elicit insights into incidences of social and cultural reproduction with hegemony evident in visible and invisible ways among the cultural group. This ethnography describes how a group of girls navigate this territory in school. It explores the effects of the personal, group and institutional habitus that mediate the girls’ everyday interactions. The girls’ peer interactions and contextual experiences serve as an explanatory framework, which references how power is shared, wielded and resisted among the myriad of relationships within the school. The school life of the girls is described at an individual and group level with themes such as friendship, conformity, resistance and alienation discussed, within the framework of school life. Findings related to youth culture and identities elicit challenges for the girls as they manage the duality of adolescence and scholarly endeavour.

Covering the key points of dispute and areas of controversy within the field, this outstanding collection includes papers from the leading writers, and presents a sophisticated and versatile toolbox of ideas for theory-building and research.

This collection of articles explores how a wide range of academics-- diverse in location, rank and discipline-- understand and express how they deal with spirituality in their professional lives and how they integrate spirituality in teaching, research, administration, and advising. The contributors also analyze the culture of academia and its challenges to the spiritual development of those involved. Twenty chapter authors--from a variety of faith traditions--discuss the ways in which their own beliefs have affected their journeys through higher education. By using an autoethnographic, self-analytical lens, this collection shows how various spiritualities have influenced how higher education is understood, taught and performed. The book will stimulate debate and conversations on a topic traditionally ignored in academia

Harry Wolcott takes the reader inside the process of constructing an ethnographic study, offering a wealth of lessons from one of the masters. In this concise primer, he provides a set of models from which to organize a study, explains how to pick the various components that go into the ethnographic report, advises on how to create analogies and metaphors to help explain your work, and identifies the key features of an effective ethnography. He also discusses the role of serendipity and questions of ethics in doing ethnographic work. Learn the essentials of ethnography from one of the masters.