Prompted by discovering a paper written in 1980 which described a process of 'ethnography by proxy', I revisit this concept in the light of two research projects: a workplace study of an electronics company conducted in the early 1990s and a later home-based study of young children's encounters with toys and technology. The paper defines…

This paper describes an incident between an academic researcher and a community member. The encounter, in which a researcher asked questions about farming practices, shows how cultural misunderstanding and failure to communicate the gains of research to the community has the potential to generate distorted information. The academic researcher has…

Wilson discusses ways in which educational research is rendered ineffective, stemming from distortion of the concepts of "education" and "research." Includes three commentaries: Harry Brighouse discusses factors impeding research, John White contests the definition of education, and Marian Sainsbury argues that educational…

Draws on research with Brazilian street children to present methodological and ethical challenges inherent in research with street children; provides suggestions for overcoming these challenges. Issues of concern include the following: definition and sampling, and lack of clarity in these areas; measurement aspects, including surveys,…

The training of researchers in the educational technology field has continued in the traditional vein of the experimental paradigm. This document describes a workshop presented to balance that training and to prepare students to undertake research in a non-traditional way. The workshop aimed to acquaint students with non-causal naturalistic…