Reminder: 27th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum

[Francis M. Hult]

The University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education and the Center
for Urban Ethnography announce the 27th Annual Ethnography in Education
Research Forum, to be held February 24th and February 25th, 2006 on the
University of Pennslyvania campus. The Ethnography in Education Research
Forum, the largest annual meeting of qualitative researchers in education,
is currently accepting proposal submissions for individual papers and symposia 
that focus directly on issues of significance for the conduct and
understanding of the processes of education. The submission DEADLINE is 
OCTOBER 15, 2005.
 
We encourage proposals of research in areas such as ethnography of
education; research on everyday school practice; practictioner research; 
multicultural, critical and feminist studies of education; language and 
literacy in education; urban and international education; indigenous language
revitalization; action research in education; and more. 

Please find the call for papers below as well as on the forum's website 
(http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cue/forum.php).  Note that all proposals must be 
submitted online.


27th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum

"Educators and Ethnographers Negotiating Ideological and Implementational 
Spaces”

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. 

Plenary Speakers

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

*Carole Edelsky, Arizona State University College of Education

*Antonia Candela, Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas del Centro de
 Investigación y Estudios Avanzados, México

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

*Jan Nespor, Virginia Tech School of Education

CALL FOR PAPERS
The dates for the 2006 Forum are Friday, February 24 - Saturday, February, 25, 
2006. Participants should plan to arrive in Philadelphia on Thursday evening, 
February 23, as both Friday and Saturday will offer a full program of 
sessions. Registration and all sessions will be held on the University of 
Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia, PA.

Proposals are invited in areas such as:
*Multicultural and inter-ethnic issues in education.
*Practitioner research – by teachers, administrators, students, parents, and
 other school community members.
*Critical and feminist studies in education.
*Ethnographic evaluation in education.
*Language learning, language policy, and literacy issues in education.
*Uses of ethnography in science and math education.
*Uses of microethnographic methods in research on everyday school practice.
*Ethnographies of urban education.
*Indigenous language revitalization.
*Action research in education settings.
*Ethnography and Educational Policy

PRESENTATION FORMATS
1. Traditional Paper – Individual or Group
These presentations should report on analyses, results, and conclusions in 
final form.

2. Work-in-Progress – Individual or Group
If you anticipate presenting preliminary conclusions, submit your proposal as 
a Work-in-Progress. Presentations of works-in-progress differ from both data 
analysis and from traditional papers in that initial findings and tentative 
conclusions are emphasized. Presenters may consult the audience about their 
conclusions.

3. Data Analysis Consultation - Individual submissions only
Held on Friday only: 30 minutes for presentation and discussion.
Proposals should state questions about data analysis and identify the data to 
be addressed. Please adhere to the following guidelines for your proposal:

(a) State 2 or 3 questions about data analysis that will be addressed. 
Questions should be narrowly defined and intimately tied to the data being 
presented.

(b) Identify the specific data that will actually be used in the presentation. 
Data to be shared may include field notes (maximum 2 pages), interview 
transcripts (maximum 1 page), audio and/or video tapes (maximum 1 minute), and 
archival and site documents.

(c) Presenters should not plan to present preliminary conclusions. Rather, 
their purpose should be to seek advice on data analysis.

The data analysis presentation is unique to the Forum. Presentation guidelines 
are as follows:

(1) 5 minutes to describe the nature of the research (1 minute), provide 
context (1 minute), and present the specific data analysis questions to be 
addressed (3 minutes).

(2) 5 minutes for the audience to read or watch the data.

(3) 20 minutes for general discussion guided by a research methods consultant. 
Audience members provide insights and advice regarding emergent patterns and 
themes in the data as well as alternative methods of analysis.

Presenters must prepare 40 copies of written data sources or select a few 
minutes of audio and/or video data to share with the audience. Please note 
audiovisual equipment needs in your proposal.

SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL 
Individual Presentations (15 minutes)
Proposals may be submitted by individual presenters for any of the 
presentation formats: Data Analysis, Work-in-Progress, or Traditional Paper. 
(See instructions online, in addition to the notes above on presentation 
formats.)

Group Sessions (75 minutes)
Group session proposals may be submitted for Traditional Paper or Work-in-
Progress formats, but not for Data Analysis Consultations, which are always 
individual submissions. 

The proposal should describe the rationale and specific content of the 
session, including a brief overview of the session topic and a paragraph on 
research methods used, a summary of findings, and bibliographic citations. The 
proposal should make clear the relevance of the session topic for the field of 
education. 

No fewer than three, and no more than six presenters, including a discussant, 
should be included in a group session. These sessions may vary in 
organization: a set of individual papers, a panel discussion, a plan for 
interaction among members of the audience in discussion or workshop groups are 
possible formats. If the session consists of a set of individual papers, the 
group session proposal must also include an abstract for each individual 
presentation.

Practitioner Research – Individual Paper or Group Session
In addition to submitting your proposal as an individual paper or group 
session, and indicating clearly whether it is for the traditional paper, work-
in-progress, or data consultation format, you may also choose to designate it 
as a practitioner research presentation. These presentations focus on research 
by teachers and other practitioners in educational settings (e.g., school 
principals, counselors, non-teaching aides, parents, students, and other 
members of school communities). Practitioner research presentations are 
particularly featured on Saturday of the Forum, known as Practitioner Research 
Day.  

CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION OF PROPOSALS
1. Significance for education: Presentations should address topics concerning 
educational processes, formal or informal. We do not accept general 
ethnographic reports on topics not directly related to educational issues.

2. Conceptual framework: The theoretical assumptions and conceptual bases 
underlying the research should be briefly described.

3. Interpretation as a framing perspective: Interpretive strategies should be 
utilized to identify the various points of view of the person/people/program 
whose actions are being described and analyzed.

4. Method: Ethnographic research is multi-layered; the presentation should 
combine evidence from a variety of data sources, i.e. more than one of the 
following: participant observation, field notes, audio- or video-tapes, 
interviews, site documents, demographic and historical information.

5. Description: There should be both depth and specificity in description. 
Rather than strictly focusing on results, we expect a rich description of the 
study context, presenting such things as vivid narrative vignettes and quotes 
from interviews. The descriptive voice should communicate 
specificity, "showing" as opposed to "telling" in general terms.

6. Analysis: We are interested in both the originality of the analysis and the 
adequacy of the evidence. Analytic categories should be arrived at inductively 
rather than deductively. Analysis should incorporate the specific and the 
general, considering details of what actual persons do and linking those 
particulars to general processes of social structure and culture.


PROCEDURE FOR SUBMITTING PROPOSALS
All proposals are submitted electronically. Go to 

http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cue/forum.php 

Choose on-line submission. The final deadline for proposal submission is 
October 15, 2005. We will not be able to review incomplete proposals. 


27th ETHNOGRAPHY FORUM CALENDAR
October 15, 2005 – All proposals should be submitted electronically by this 
date.

Early November – Notification of acceptance or rejection by e-mail. All 
submitters will receive notification. Information regarding the day and time 
of sessions will be provided later.

Early January 2006 – All individuals and groups who have been accepted will be 
notified by e-mail that the preliminary schedule and the presenters' contact 
information are posted on the web. Using the find function on the web browser, 
individuals and groups can find the day and time of their session. The pre-
registration forms will also be posted on the website. Please fill in the 
form, submit the form electronically, and then print out the confirmation 
page. Include the confirmation page with your check or money order.

January 21, 2006 – All requests for changes in the schedule must be submitted 
via e-mail to cue at gse.upenn.edu by this date. 

February 14, 2006 - Pre-registration confirmation page and payment must be 
post-marked by this date. Final schedule will be posted on the web. No 
reimbursement for cancelled registration available after this date.

February 24 and February 25, 2006 - 27th Ethnography in Education Research 
Forum

Center for Urban Ethnography
University of Pennsylvania
Graduate School of Education
3700 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216
cue at gse.upenn.edu