Although education scholars have long valued contributions of the social sciences to theory and practice, educational researchers have contributed a significant legacy for organizational theory. By focusing the debate on culture and politics, the new paradigm shift in education interprets organizations as being rational, symbolic, and political.…

Applied ethnography has strengths in areas that vitally need research and can inform policymakers in areas where rationalism and positivism cannot. However, several threats to the ethnographic approach are posed by a utilitarian culture, e.g., redefinition of the variables studied, a focus on discrete facts and "controlling" knowledge…

This paper is part of a symposium focusing on the Safe School Study recently completed by the National Institute of Education. The symposium attempted to delineate the critical methodological problems arising from ethnographic research in the school setting on school violence and delinquency, and to report recent findings from studies using…

This paper examines and compares the administrative styles of two principals who worked in a southern desegregated school. The emphasis in this study is on the policies and practices which were either effective or ineffective in helping each of the principals deal with the task of managing a desegregated school. Different actions taken by the…

Meta-analysis, as a quantitative approach, requires a determination of a basic comparability between phenomena so that the data can be aggregated for the analysis. This is the crux of the problem with the meta-analysis analogy for a meta-ethnography. It implies an aggregate theory of social explanation, and thus may violate the qualitative,…

The failure to attain a true synthesis of six ethnographic studies of interracial education in desegregated schools is examined. Detailed individual descriptions of desegregation processes were yielded but the failure of summary attempts is attributed to the lack of a theory of social explanation appropriate to interpretive social science, and a…