This book scrutinizes some basic assumptions about educational research with the aim that such research may act more powerfully on those persistent and important problems of our schools surrounding issues of race, class, and gender. In particular, the 13 essays in this book examine how power is infused in research by addressing such questions as what role political activism can play in the research process, how to understand the "other" from an insider's point of view, and whether educational research can confront and act upon oppressive structures such as patriarchy and Eurocentrism. Feminist, gay and lesbian, Black, and American Indian perspectives and responses to those perspectives are offered in the following essays: (1) "Dis-stance and Other Stances: Negotiations of Power inside Feminist Research" (M. Fine); (2) "Fertile Obsession: Validity after Poststructuralism" (P. Lather); (3) "When Method Becomes Power" (D. Patai); (4) "Queer Relations with Educational Research" (G. M. Leck); (5) "On Method and Hope" (W. G. Tierney); (6) "Red Ribbons at the Cracker Barrel" (R. Platizky); (7) "The Power To Know One Thing Is Never the Power To Know All Things: Methodological Notes on Two Studies of Black American Teachers" (M. Foster); (8) "Witchcraft and Blessings, Science and Rationality: Discourses of Power and Silence in Collaborative Work with Navajo Schools" (M. D. LeCompte and D. McLaughlin); (9) "Empowering the Culturally Diversified Sociological Voice" (J. H. Stanfield, II); (10) "Alternative Methodologies and the Research Context" (A. Gitlin and R. Russell); (11) "Distance and Relation Reconsidered: Tensions in the Ethnographic Text" (D. Dippo); (12) "Expanding Our Notions of 'Critical Qualitative Methodology': Bringing Race, Class, and Gender into the Discussion" (L. Lamphere); and (13) "Extending Power and Specifying Method within the Discourse of Activist Research" (J. G. Ladwig and J. M. Gore). This book contains author profiles and an index. (SV)