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In interpretive inquiry, researchers need interviewing approaches that will create possibilities for insight and holistic understanding. A hermeneutic interview protocol was developed and refined over a number of years in the context of an interpretive inquiry course. In this study, one of the authors examines her experience with using this interview framework in a practice inquiry for her research on "understandings of the child" in intercultural marriages. The study identifies the misgivings and doubts she experienced before and during the interview. It also illustrates how the structure of the interview supported the interview participant in reflecting upon and reconstructing his experience and supported the researcher in accomplishing a fusion of horizons. The interview framework invited stories from different important contexts and having stories from across time, place, and activity enabled the researcher to identify themes. Clarity about themes meant that important stories could be interpreted with more confidence.

For a number of years, studies of places focused on their economic efficiency, though more recently, attention has shifted to questions about social justice with an emphasis on the experienced actualities of place. The places of children's everyday lives have limited their opportunities for nurturance, growth, and learning. In this article, the author maintains that making questions about "the place of children's everyday lives" more central in research with children and youth can also contribute to improved social justice for children. Furthermore, classrooms and schools can be understood and researched as places intended to support young people's growth and well being. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section offers a sense of the lived meaning of place, drawing upon "place stories" from students in a graduate course on "Children and Place" to introduce some of cultural geography's ideas about place in a contextualized way. The second section reviews a theoretical framework for understanding everyday life as curriculum and for appreciating the significance of place in everyday life. It suggests that an awareness of children' needs/rights should serve an interpretive framework for evaluating the places of their everyday lives. The final section discusses some examples of practices in schools that are responsive to students' needs of place. The author maintains that school itself should be a good place in terms of students' needs for nurturance and growth. She also suggests that research on the places of students' lives outside of school should inform the curricula offered within schools. (Contains 2 notes.)

We investigated pitch perception of string vibrato tones among string players in two separate studies. In both studies we used tones of acoustic instruments (violin and cello) as stimuli. In the first, we asked 192 high school and university string players to listen to a series of tonal pairs: one tone of each pair was performed with vibrato and the other without. Violin tones with vibrato were judged as lower in pitch than non-vibrato stimuli with the same mean frequency, more so among high school string players than university students. In the second study string players tuned their own instrument to match stimulus tones and we tested whether there are differences when performers match tones using vibrato versus non-vibrato. Participants were 30 high school string players and 30 university string players: 20 cellists, 20 violists, and 20 violinists. Performers tuned slightly but significantly lower (about three cents) when using vibrato. This outcome was consistent for tuning conditions, instruments, and experience levels.

In interviews for interpretive inquiry or interpretive case studies, researchers hope to grasp participants' perspectives and learn about the nature and meaning of their experiences. There are many challenges or requirements for useful or successful interviews. In this paper we identify important aspects of interviews and examine the helpful contributions of using pre-interview activities. Pre-interview activities were drawings or diagrams that participants completed about the experiences of interest. Participants brought the completed drawings to their interviews and the interviews commenced with presentation and discussion of these visuals. This paper presents four studies that illustrate how the use of pre-interview activities can support participants in identifying central ideas in their experiences. In the interviews, the participants spoke at length about the visual representations they produced and in these reflections they identified central ideas or key themes in the experiences. Some drawings were a source of visual metaphors for discussing the experience and some highlighted whole-part relationships that informed interpretation. The findings contribute to conversations about how to "invite stories" rather than "request reports" from participants, how images other than photographs can serve as evocative and potent visuals to support memory and reflection in interviews, and how researchers can better or more directly access a participant's meaning.

Education is often understood as the sole responsibility of parents and teachers. Reggio Emilia identifies a 3rd teacher between child, teacher, and parent: the environment. In its attention to how space can be thoughtfully arranged, Reggio Emilia has reconceptualized space as a key source of educational provocation and insight. In what ways does this idea support and challenge existing understandings within early childhood education? The article draws on educational literature on space(s) and early childhood education, including but not confined to Reggio Emilia, as well as classroom-based practice, to pursue the implications of the notion of environment as 3rd teacher to classrooms and teacher education and how both preservice and experienced teachers can use this knowledge to inform their practice.

This article is about the possibilities of conducting research with children productively. Children may need suitable prompts, occasions, or media for their expression. The discussion begins with an overview of the challenges or dynamics researchers can experience with any participants in qualitative research in the constructivist paradigm. It draws on key ideas from hermeneutics to clarify the importance of working holistically, attending to whole-part relationships, and having an increased sensitivity to language. Finally, two approaches are described and suggested as being helpful in research with children: the use of pre-interview activities and narrative approaches.

Understanding children's experience is increasingly a key purpose of much educational research. In contrast to traditional approaches to the study of children that emphasized the socialization of children through various stages of development, researchers within the social constructionism perspective begin with an insistence that childhood is a social construction that varies with time and place (Holloway & Valentine, 2000; James, Jenks & Prout, 1998). They study children as social actors, as beings in their own right rather than as pre-adult becomings. Children are seen as active beings whose agency is important in the creation of their own life worlds. Although such research draws on adult perspectives to discern how children's lives are shaped by forces beyond their own control, it recognizes the importance of learning children's ways of proceeding and ways of making sense of their experience.

Examines the nature of disadvantage for minority students, solutions offered by radical theorists, and roles that stories play in furthering progress with antiracism. The paper examines the centeredness of the white middle class; teachers' perspectives; monocultural curriculum; shortcomings of multicultural education; possibilities from critical theory; learning from students' stories; facilitating stories among students; and teachers sharing stories with each other. (SM)

Teacher-student mentoring programs can provide the support and direction that marginalized students need, particularly during the difficult transition into a new school. Here, three Canadian high school students and their mentors describe their experiences in a successful mentoring program. (Author)

In two Alberta elementary schools, volunteer mentors were paired with 27 children, primarily in grades K-2, to provide support for literacy development. After six to eight weeks, interviews with students, mentors, and teachers showed that child-mentor relationships were enjoyable for both parties and that students improved in self-confidence and classroom participation. Contains 19 references. (SV)