"Ethnographic research in low-income countries provides the kind of detailed and thick descriptive data needed for understanding educational processes and the role of education for quasi-literate minority populations in agricultural economies. Education is essential to stabilizing the lives of young people embedded in shattering traditional cultures, struggling to transition and adapt to life and work in the contemporary globalized and market-driven world. Field research can shed light on fruitful paths created by enterprising individuals working together in teaching teams. Research can help connect the educational process and outcomes to meaningful human development goals and to career opportunities within the context of local economic expansions tied to world markets. The research reported in the following chapters on the Karen refugees of Burma—now Myanmar—by Dr. Pia Jolliffe thus offers especially rich, compelling and poignant substantive data on the concrete challenges and issues faced specifically by a small group of Karen youth—real human beings—whose lives and identities have been destabilized by conflict, violence, displacement and their refugee status..."