Children's school problems are often blamed on either the individual or one of the groups to which the child belongs. An interpretive approach views individuals and groups, the worlds of actions and ideas, as mutually defining and constitutive. (Author/LHW)

In addition to learning academic content, school children learn to become socially competent members of the classroom community. This study uses microethnographic techniques to discover and describe important aspects of the social competence acquired by kindergarten and first-grade children. (Author/RLV)

Articles that are concerned with ethnographic studies of schooling and learning in order to discuss the contribution of ethnographic inquiry to teacher education are reviewed. The first section of the paper divides the literature on the ethnography of schooling and learning into three types: (1) articles that address theoretical and methodological…