Ethnography and Education Policy across the Americas

LEVINSON, BRADLEY; CADE, SANDRA; PADAWER, ANA Y ELVIR, ANA PATRICIA

Praeger. Greenwood Pub.

Lugar: Westport, CT; Año: 2002 p. 209

1-56750-673-9

For over ten years now, qualitative educational researchers across the Americas have gathered almost every year to exchange research findings and share ideas about the process of doing educational research.  Convened initially by a small cadre of colleagues and friends across the U.S.-Mexico border, especially at the University of New Mexico and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), what began as the Inter-American Symposium on Ethnographic Classroom Research has now grown to encompass more participants from a greater range of countries and institutions. The ongoing dialogue and collaborative network created by the Symposium has enriched research agendas on both sides of the border, assisted in the training of graduate students in qualitative research methods for education, provided valuable comparative perspective on the educational processes under examination, and clarified the roles and commitments of the educational ethnographer. Scholars have learned to think and theorize across national and disciplinary boundaries, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, history, political science, pedagogy, and curriculum. In October of 1999, the Eighth Interamerican Symposium on Ethnographic Educational Research was hosted by the School of Education at Indiana University, in Bloomington. The contents of this book reflect the proceedings of the 8th Symposium. Several authors chose to submit full papers for consideration, and we have included most of them here. Several others re-worked their original position statements into brief papers in their own right. Following Elsie Rockwell’s revised keynote address, we present five full articles that address the relation between ethnography and educational policy through sustained empirical attention to specific research sites and projects. The next section of the book presents the shorter position statements, interspersed with a transcript of selected exchanges at one of the workshops. We hope and trust that this innovative format, while it eliminates certain contextual referents, will nevertheless be illuminating to readers. Finally, Frederick Erickson, who also delivered a paper at the Symposium, provides a final closing commentary on the book.