In this address I identify specific and unique roles anthropology can play in the necessary work of decolonizing education. These include: building anti-racist schools that honor all "ways of being human"; decolonizing school leadership and working towards culture creation for equity and anti-racism; decolonizing teaching and learning…

This article is a slightly edited version of my invited award talk, delivered just days after the presidential election, when I received the George and Louise Spindler Award at the annual business meeting of the Council on Anthropology and Education, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2016. In those first days after the election we were all…

This article is a slightly revised version of the CAE Presidential Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans, LA on November 20, 2010. The address inaugurated a CAE program change in which a full evening session was devoted to the talk, including commentaries by Hugh Mehan and Sofia…

Explores the relevance of anthropology today, stressing that the current relevance of anthropology has to do with current work, building on the previously relevant work of earlier anthropologists. Asking the right questions, good questions, means considering issues that are pursued for decades, rather than focusing on the pursuit of grants. (SLD)

Discusses important but relatively neglected themes of the 1954 Carmel Conference on anthropology and education: (1) search for philosophical as well as theoretical articulation of education and anthropology; (2) necessity for sociocultural contextualization of educative process; (3) relation of teaching and learning to life cycle; and (4) nature…

This paper presents an overview of anthropological approaches to studying mathematics classrooms, programs, and innovations in schools. Focus is placed on teaching and learning and programs and innovations from an anthropological point of view. An explanation of how the education of cultural groups could be included in these perspectives is also…

This study examines the socialization and enculturation process by which one becomes a school board member, using adult socialization and small group theory to construct a model of the role personalization process. Thirteen new school board members in seven Arizona school districts were interviewed indepth, from the announcement of their candidacy…

A respected method of studying comparative education is that of analyzing national character and assessing its impact on methods and systems of education. Like anthropologists, comparative educators must immerse themselves in a society in order to study its educational system. This analogy raises the issue of methodology, and many studies have…

An ethnographic evaluation adapts data collection and analytical methods of the ethnographer to the purpose of decision-making. Ethnography and evaluation differ in determination of problems addressed by the researcher. Ethnographers are interested in slow cultural change, while evaluators address policy questions requiring immediate answers. The…

An adequate theory of educational administration demands an emphasis on understanding rather than legitimation; the inclusion of qualitative as well as quantitative constructs; and the incorporation of philosophical concerns, especially those dealing with epistemology and ethics. Developments in the "new sociology" of education and in…

This paper examines the origins of the two educational terms--class and curriculum. The authors believe that an understanding of the origins of key words in education may contribute not only to the history of education but also to the wider development of educational theory. The paper argues that the emergence of classes (in the modern sense)…

Reviews the status of educational anthropology. Argues that (1) anthropology's strength lies in understanding groups; (2) the complexity of the gap between a school and its community must be better understood; (3) anthropological research offers theoretical paradigms for understanding educational problems holistically; and (4) without significant…

This paper examines the oral and written discourse processes in a high school physics class and how these discourse processes are related to sociocultural practices in scientific communities. The theoretical framework is based on sociological and anthropological studies of scientific communities and ethnographies of classroom life. The use of…

Reviews the contributions of anthropology in educational experiments designed to help educationally and socially disadvantaged children. Cautions that educational psychology will retain its hegemony in educational research, unless anthropology is able to show how educational failure can be reversed. (GC)

Anthropological fieldwork is characterized as the most human methodology of the social sciences. Fieldwork brings the researcher into intimate relationships with the host people and facilitates perception of the unexpected activity of general social processes and understanding the initially perplexing conduct of the hosts. Fieldwork also has…