In response to the challenge of geometry's abstract and less engaging nature for students, this study explored the potential of connecting geometry to cultural elements, specifically geometric ornaments found in various cultures worldwide. Geometric ornaments, laden with cultural and spiritual significance, serve as a bridge between mathematics…

The purpose of this study was to explore the ways instructors' subject matter beliefs regarding mathematics shape their courses in a community college environment. Data were collected and analysed from instructors' philosophical definitions of mathematics and observations of teaching episodes using a constructivist grounded theory research design.…

Describes the rationale and focus of World Language Communities, a core course in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The course emphasizes the social, political, and economic implications of language diversity and the dynamics of natural language and linguistic communities. (SED)

In an effort to demonstrate why good qualitative ethnography must be an equal partner in the process of building scientific knowledge, this study examined how the personal meanings assigned to the public concept of retirement affected the social actions of the elderly when they retired. The public and personal interpretations/meanings workers…

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…

Methods employed in social science research must be true to the phenomena under investigation. Both symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology take everyday life as their fundamental premise. Symbolic interactionism, based primarily on the work of George Herbert Mead, is the peculiar and distinctive character of interaction as it takes place…

In addition to the documentation, annotation, and provision of contextual information that the authentic translation of folklore materials demands, folk stories that are intended for children should reflect the basic mythic patterns of good literature in their translated structure. The aims in translating such stories for children are to recreate…

A study was conducted in order to determine the specific classroom qualities and characteristics that promote and motivate students to develop attitudes and behaviors conducive to civic participation. One classroom is a bi-lingual sixth grade, located in an older neighborhood school in a coastal southern California city and the other is a…

Karen Horney's critique of Freud's theory of female development suggests that much theory and research in psychology is androcentric, and calls for the elimination of biases. This point is questioned, and the posit that scientific knowledge does not answer the question of what makes a person either female or male is explored. Biological,…

The potential uses of ethnography and aesthetic criticism as sources for developing a qualitative approach to evaluating classrooms are delineated. Such work involves three interrelated processes--description, interpretation, and appraisal--which are discussed and exemplified. When describing a classroom, the evaluator vividly renders it,…

This paper highlights an attempt by two grade 8 teachers, Bulelwa and Kevin, to draw in the everyday in the teaching of mathematics. Though located in different South African contexts and settings, both teachers tend to enable their learners' access to mathematics by rendering the everyday inauthentic. I argue that inauthenticating the everyday is…

Ecological research methodology can assist the educational technologist in both his practical decision making responsibilities and in his more formal pursuit of theoretical understandings. Critics of traditional methodologies maintain that the validity of educational inquiry, as well as the generation and verification of educational theories, can…

Designed to answer some of the questions concerning the nature of professional ethics in the fields of anthropology, psychology, and sociology, this report outlines the range of ethical concerns of these three disciplines and describes the way in which these concerns have been previously presented. The first of the three sections of the report…

This paper argues that ritual and other cultural forms can be validly compared to one another only at the level of their meaning and that in order to do this one must begin by setting them in the sociocultural context which gives them meaning. A ritual at a hospital for the rehabilitation of drug addicts and alcoholics is described, analyzed, and…

This volume contains twenty-five of the papers presented at the Seventh Algonquian conference. Topics covered in the papers include recently discovered linguistic fragments of Ocanahowan, the Wittiko people, ethno-history and archeology of the Mushuan, color terms in Narragansett, the Christian holidays of the Wabanaki, dialects of the Eastern…