Authority is a fundamental, problematic, and poorly understood component of classroom life. A better understanding of classroom authority can be achieved by reviewing writings on social theory, educational ideology, and qualitative research in schools. Social theories provide important analytical tools for examining the constitutive elements of authority but fall short of explaining its variability and contextual influences. Discussion of educational ideologies offers insights into the debates, historical contexts, and policy and reform agendas that shape the politics of authority while neglecting empirical realities. Qualitative studies present empirical data and analyses on the challenges intrinsic to classroom relations, but, exceptions aside, they often lack explicit attention to authority. More research focused on classroom authority as a social construction is needed to address critical educational concerns for contemporary practitioners, policy makers, and researchers.

School participants in two desegregated urban high schools, Lincoln and Nor‐wood East, shared virtually the same image of the good or “mode1” student. But student peer cultures differed significantly between the sites with regards to the acceptability of this and other images for African Americans. Within these contrasting school contexts, six high‐achieving black juniors formed and then performed identities as model students, as black persons, and as other selves. They responded in unique ways to what they perceived to be conflicting images of who they ought to be.

This article addresses the difficulties that educational ethnographers and qualitative researchers have experienced with what appear to be great ethical divides between their research approaches and the approval processes of institutional review boards. The author begins with a brief discussion of ethical issues involving human subjects in education research, then explains the divides as largely a consequence of different ethical frameworks and orientations toward applications of the basic ethical principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. She also discusses the challenges of bureaucratic arrangements established to ensure federal compliance. She concludes with strategies for bridging the divides, with emphasis on the importance of representation, communication, education, and practical academic acumen.

A valid and reliable nursing culture assessment tool aimed at capturing general aspects of nursing culture is needed for use in health care settings to assess and then reshape indicated troubled areas of the nursing culture. This article summarizes the Nursing Culture Assessment Tool's (NCAT) development and reports on a cross-sectional, exploratory investigation of its psychometric properties. The research aims were to test the tool's psychometric properties; discover its dimensionality; and refine the item structure to best represent the construct of nursing culture, an occupational subset of organizational culture. Empirical construct validity was tested using a sample of licensed nurses and nursing assistants (n = 340). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and logistical regression yielded a 6-factor, 19-item solution. Evidence supports the tool's validity for assessing nursing culture as a basis for shaping the culture into one that supports change, thereby accelerating, improving, and advancing nursing best practices and care outcomes.

This article explores the crisis of respect needed to establish authority in two urban public high schools. The crisis was fueled by discourses with conflicting speech and normative codes that undermined the moral order in classrooms and corridors and caused students and teachers to fight for respect. In classrooms, the battles for respect were fought in defense of the dominant educational regime and control over the daily regimen of pedagogical practice. In corridors, students moved between the opposing poles of mainstream respectability and streetwise reputation as they vied for power in peer relations. The article concludes with recommendations for resolving the fight based on school-wide reform efforts and for addressing the conflicting discourses in a manner that engenders mutual respect between teachers and students in urban public high schools.