27th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum

[Francis M. Hult]

27th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum

“Educators and Ethnographers Filling Ideological and Implementational Spaces”

February 24-25, 2006
University of Pennsylvania
Graduate School of Education
3700 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA

Throughout the world, ideological and implementational gaps continue to develop
between globalizing forces and national educational policies on the one hand
and pedagogical and social justice demands in classrooms and schools on the
other. Educators who negotiate these gaps on a daily basis search for third
spaces and creative ways to fill them. They struggle to meet the demands of
standardized assessments while trying to create curricula that are both
engaging and relevant for students with diverse backgrounds. They seek out
pedagogical strategies for helping their students benefit from the social and
economic advantages of globalization without sacrificing local ways of being
and doing.  Educational researchers, in turn, attempt to understand the
inter-connections and disparities between different levels of educational
practice – from policy-making, to curricular design, to the work of classroom
teachers. These researchers collaborate with teachers and administrators to
bridge implementational gaps and to reconcile local ideologies with those
reflected in educational policy, including ways of transforming, resisting and
challenging those ideologies.

The Ethnography in Education Research Forum invites papers that explore these
issues by documenting grassroots responses to varying levels of educational
policy, describing teacher-researcher collaboration in the negotiation of third
spaces, making theoretical and methodological connections between the study of
societal level phenomena and local processes, bringing to light covert
responses to overt policy decisions, and critically examining relationships
between academic and public interests.

**Submission information will be announced in August**

Plenary speakers:

*Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, New York University Steinhardt School of Education

*Carole Edelsky, Arizona State University College of Education

*Antonia Candela, Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla

*Elsie Rockwell, Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas, Centro de
Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Pedagógico Nacional, México

*Jan Nespor, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Co-Convenors:
Nancy H. Hornberger
Kathryn Howard

Co-Coordinators:
Francis M. Hult
David Cassels Johnson

For more information contact David at cue at gse.upenn.edu

Center for Urban Ethnography
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
3700 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216
Email: cue at gse.upenn.edu
Phone: 215-898-3273
www.gse.upenn.edu/cue