Papers by Jennifer Wolgemuth
In this panel we bring together faculty members with varying perspectives on questions about what... more In this panel we bring together faculty members with varying perspectives on questions about what qualifies someone to teach qualitative research. Unlike accrediting agencies, such as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), and other neoliberal accountability systems that readily provide answers to these questions, we do not intend to offer any answers or solutions. Rather our aim is to open up these questions to dialogue and critique -- to unsettle them through exploration of our various experiences and perceptions of the label and work of ‘methodologists.’ In five individual and group papers, we engage in wonderings about the power and privilege of the label ‘methodologist,’ what being a qualitative methodologist (if we consider ourselves as such) enables and prevents us from thinking and doing (with students, faculty members, in our research agendas), the extent to which qualitative ‘methodologists’ are necessary or vital to teaching the next generation of qualitative researchers, and more. As faculty members who teach qualitative methods courses, supervise doctoral students to conduct qualitative dissertation research, and varyingly make use of the label ‘methodologist’ at our own institution, we will share our perspectives that arose (or were stifled and ignored) as we worked together to develop and offer a curriculum in qualitative research for our College. Our panel session will include ample time for audience discussion to further ongoing conversation and questions about the role of ‘methodologists’ in teaching qualitative research
Educational Researcher, 2017
Research syntheses in education, particularly meta-analyses and best-evidence syntheses, identify... more Research syntheses in education, particularly meta-analyses and best-evidence syntheses, identify evidence-based practices by combining findings across studies whose constructs are similar enough to warrant comparison. Yet constructs come preloaded with social, historical, political, and cultural assumptions that anticipate how research problems are framed and solutions formulated. The information research syntheses provide is therefore incomplete when the assumptions underlying constructs are not critically understood. We describe and demonstrate a new systematic review method, critical construct synthesis (CCS), to unpack assumptions in research synthesis and to show how other framings of educational problems are made possible when the constructs excluded through methodological elimination decisions are taken into consideration.
Educational Research for Social Change, 2019
This study intervenes in commonsensical ways of exploring and understanding educational assessmen... more This study intervenes in commonsensical ways of exploring and understanding educational assessment within an audit culture of measurement. Drawing on sociomateriality and methodological approaches associated with material culture and narrative inquiry, we curated an exhibition based on interviews with 13 informants and the things they brought to convey their assessment experiences. Based on analysis of their narratives, we clustered our findings and organised them into a gallery of two thingcentred installations: "Assessment and Tools," and "Assessment and Arts/Crafts." Curating the gallery led us to a creative way of articulating concerns about excessive assessment into a thing-interview protocol to be used in future inquiry, involving interviews with people and things. We showcase these installations, along with interview prompts, as an online exhibition. The aim is to continue the conversation on the future of assessment in connection to purposeful, equity-oriented education.
The International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, 2019
We center three publicly accessible images: (1) Am I not a Man and a Brother? (1787), (2) Colin K... more We center three publicly accessible images: (1) Am I not a Man and a Brother? (1787), (2) Colin Kaepernick (2017) “Taking a Knee”, (3) Mother McDowell of the Black Student in Florida Admonished for “Taking a Knee” in school (2017). The photograph of mother McDowell is included, rather than her son, who she wanted to remain anonymous across media outlets. We draw primarily from publicly accessible media and scholarship available via the Internet (museums, newscasts, scholarly repositories) to provide a composite of kneeling discourse and counter-narratives related to race (i.e., anti-slavery, abolition, anti-racism protests) and proper behavior. Each image is situated within literature supporting analysis through concepts (time, race) visual, and textual information. Rather than detailing the images, we focus on the surrounding narratives, contemporary readings, redactions, and annotations (we create or relate to) to consider emotions as part of the context, impetus, and force behind...
education policy analysis archives
This special issue takes up urgent questions about how we education scholars might think and do p... more This special issue takes up urgent questions about how we education scholars might think and do policy and methodology in what has come to be known as the post-truth era. The authors in this special issue grapple with questions about the roles and responsibilities of educational researchers in an era in which research and policy have lost their moorings in T/truth. Collectively they reconceptualize educational research and policy in light of post-truths, anti-science sentiment, and the global rise of right-wing populism. At the same time we editors wonder whether post-truth is given a bad rap. Could post-truth have something productive to offer? What does post-truth open up for educational research and policy? Or, is the real issue of this special issue a collective despair of our own insignificance and obsolescence in the wake of post-truth. Whatever we editors and authors aimed to do, this special issue will not be heard by post-truth adherents and partisans. Perhaps its only cont...
education policy analysis archives
This special issue takes up urgent questions about how we education scholars might think and do p... more This special issue takes up urgent questions about how we education scholars might think and do policy and methodology in what has come to be known as the post-truth era. The authors in this special issue grapple with questions about the roles and responsibilities of educational researchers in an era in which research and policy have lost their moorings in T/truth. Collectively they reconceptualize educational research and policy in light of post-truths, anti-science sentiment, and the global rise of right-wing populism. At the same time we editors wonder whether post-truth is given a bad rap. Could post-truth have something productive to offer? What does post-truth open up for educational research and policy? Or, is the real issue of this special issue a collective despair of our own insignificance and obsolescence in the wake of post-truth. Whatever we editors and authors aimed to do, this special issue will not be heard by post-truth adherents and partisans. Perhaps its only cont...
On the sidelines of what works: scientifically based indifference, 2021
A team of systematic reviewers successfully completed a governmentcommissioned review of ‘what wo... more A team of systematic reviewers successfully completed a governmentcommissioned review of ‘what works to improve post-school outcomes
for youth with disabilities’ in 2012. Despite its success, interviews with 10
review team members revealed dissatisfaction with the process and
indifference to its outcomes. The purpose of our analysis was to examine
how the systematic review process itself led to review team members’
feelings of indifference, resignation, and pessimism. Drawing on the
writings of Henry Giroux, Gert Biesta, and Hanna Arendt that warn of the
death of democracy and the rise of totalitarianism, we explored how the
systematic review certification process, examinations, rules, and
structures deadened democratic deliberation and critique necessary, we
argue, to conducting good educational science. We end with a call for
systematic reviews in education whose researchers, products, and
processes remain ethically oriented to keeping democracy alive.
The purpose of this special issue is to generate and expand the locations and perspectives from w... more The purpose of this special issue is to generate and expand the locations and perspectives from which justice and equity, in multiple forms, are and can be, orienting concepts for critical qualitative inquiry. Although critical inquiry originates from diverse views, concerns, and conditions, all forms would always and already address matters of privilege/harm, equity/ inequity, and justice/injustice, while at the same time challenging power-oriented dualisms, systematic western notions of progress, and capitalist gains. This introductory article describes the work of special issue authors asking questions like: How might critical qualitative inquiry build from the past while at the same time lead to more just possibilities, leading to something we might recognize as inquiry as/toward/for justice? How can critical scholarship be theorized, designed, and practiced with justice as the orienting focus within (en)tangled times, materials and material injustices?
International Review of Qualitative Research, 2021
How can (post-)qualitative inquiry do justice in uncertain times? Post-qualitative inquiry, in it... more How can (post-)qualitative inquiry do justice in uncertain times? Post-qualitative inquiry, in its embrace of radical uncertainty, held promise for ethical and political responsibility in an entangled, hardly knowable world. Lately, we (authors) are doubtful of that promise. For over a year, through in-person and Zoom conversations, before and during the global pandemic, punctuated by weekly protests of a resurging Black Lives Matter movement, we reckoned with our hopes, doubts, dreams, and disappointments of justice in qualitative and post-qualitative inquiry. We reconstituted our dialogue in this paper around the topics most pressing to us: coming to justice, being wary of idols and ideology, and deciding what matters in post-qualitative inquiry. We came to the uneasy conclusion that, with no one to blame yet everyone responsible, the veneer of justice is peeling away from post-qualitative inquiry; that postqualitative inquiry has, largely against its will, become a stable, divisive, and totalizing methodology; and that post-qualitative inquiry's radical uncertainty has created the enabling conditions of indifference, apathy, and triviality. We urge (post-)qualitative inquirers to keep talking about justice and to balance a desire for post-theory with the responsibility for praxis, action, and decision-making.
Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 2019
The federal RTI policy came into effect in 2004, and saw widespread diffusion. The culture of pol... more The federal RTI policy came into effect in 2004, and saw widespread diffusion. The culture of policy framework explicates the design inherent to the life cycles of equity-oriented top-down policies – how they get made, spread, and mutate. In this critical qualitative inquiry, we interviewed six white teachers about RTI, and their experiences of using its principles to serve Black students. Using the culture of policy framework, we conducted
theoretical thematic analysis of the interview data to understand the rituals and ideologies driving the local enactments of RTI. Main findings involved a compliance-driven RTI, and deficit based interpretations of students’ poor responses to inadequate Tier 2/3 supports. Tiers became a typology for classifying students similar to special education labels. These findings provide a glimpse into RTI’s appropriation into the existing system. We discuss recommendations to help consultants develop transformative anti-oppressive practice.
Journal of School Counseling, 2019
The role of fathers in elementary education has shifted drastically in recent years. In
particula... more The role of fathers in elementary education has shifted drastically in recent years. In
particular, stay-at-home dads (SAHDs) have become more relevant in the lives of
children. Despite these changes, there remains a paucity of research on SAHDs’
experiences with their children’s schools. This qualitative study examined SAHDs’
perceptions of and experiences with their children’s schools. The research identified
three themes: (a) involvement, (b) interactions, and (c) communication. The researchers
discuss implications for elementary school counseling practice as well as future areas of
research.
Power and Education, 2019
Despite best efforts to the contrary, obscenity oozes out from under the rugs of "polite" schooli... more Despite best efforts to the contrary, obscenity oozes out from under the rugs of "polite" schooling and "tidy" society. In this post-qualitative inquiry, the authors pursue questions in defense of pedagogies of obscenity. In what ways do educators fail to educate when they eschew obscenity, understand shame and disgust as opposite to curiosity, and seek to teach in safe and sanitized classrooms? How might obscenity be educative? Drawing on their classroom experiences, the authors engage Zi zek and Gallop in an analysis of (potentially) offensive classroom practices and events. They conclude that (Zi zek and Gallop's) obscenity might enable scholars and educators to generate critical classroom spaces that travel a delicate line between offense, discomfort, and learning. The authors suggest that there is much to defend in a pedagogy of obscenity, and that the value of obscenity may be learning to live and work more critically with(in) and against the perversions of education.
Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2019
Narrative research is a qualitative research methodology in the narrative inquiry tradition. Narr... more Narrative research is a qualitative research methodology in the narrative inquiry tradition. Narrative inquiries elicit and analyze stories in order to understand people, cultures, and societies. Narrative inquiry emerged from social constructionism and the narrative turn, which attuned narrative researchers to the importance of story and the belief that people's lives are forged through stories. Narrative inquiries can be categorized as narratives of the self, narratives and society, and narratives for/of social justice. They are distinguished by their focus on the author's story, composition and analysis of narrative within broader cultural and social discourses, and use of critical theories to tell counterstories of oppressed and marginalized groups. Future influences on narrative inquiry and research include new materialist and posthumanist theories, large and small scale political and social activism, and mass production of narratives via social media.
Education Research for Social Change, 2019
This study intervenes in commonsensical ways of exploring and understanding educational assessmen... more This study intervenes in commonsensical ways of exploring and understanding educational assessment within an audit culture of measurement. Drawing on sociomateriality and methodological approaches associated with material culture and narrative inquiry, we curated an exhibition based on interviews with 13 informants and
the things they brought to convey their assessment experiences. Based on analysis of their narratives, we clustered our findings and organised them into a gallery of two thing-centred installations: “Assessment and Tools,” and “Assessment and Arts/Crafts.” Curating the gallery led us to a creative way of articulating concerns about excessive assessment into a thing-interview protocol to be used in future inquiry, involving
interviews with people and things. We showcase these installations, along with interview prompts, as an online exhibition. The aim is to continue the conversation on the future of assessment in connection to purposeful, equity-oriented education.
International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, 2019
We center three publicly accessible images: (1) Am I not a Man and a Brother? (1787), (2) Colin K... more We center three publicly accessible images: (1) Am I not a Man and a Brother? (1787), (2) Colin Kaepernick (2017) "Taking a Knee", (3) Mother McDowell of the Black Student in Florida Admonished for "Taking a Knee" in school (2017). The photograph of mother McDowell is included, rather than her son, who she wanted to remain anonymous across media outlets. We draw primarily from publicly accessible media and scholarship available via the Internet (museums, newscasts, scholarly repositories) to provide a composite of kneeling discourse and counter-narratives related to race (i.e., anti-slavery, abolition, anti-racism protests) and proper behavior. Each image is situated within literature supporting analysis through concepts (time, race) visual, and textual information. Rather than detailing the images, we focus on the surrounding narratives, contemporary readings, redactions, and annotations (we create or relate to) to consider emotions as part of the context, impetus, and force behind the actions captured in them. We juxtapose, redact, and critique images and texts associated with kneeling/taking a knee by men and boys racialized as Black, but not exclusively., as the practices we illustrate in response to structural racism (i.e., discipline in schools) also bring attention to events involving other students: a Black girl and an Indigenous (Inuit) boy.
This special issue takes up urgent questions about how we education scholars might think and do p... more This special issue takes up urgent questions about how we education scholars might think and do policy and methodology in what has come to be known as the post-truth era. The authors in this special issue grapple with questions about the roles and responsibilities of educational researchers in an era in which research and policy have lost
their moorings in T/truth. Collectively they reconceptualize educational research and policy in light of post-truths, anti-science sentiment, and the global rise of right-wing populism. At the same time we editors wonder whether post-truth is given a bad rap. Could post-truth have something productive to offer? What does post-truth open up for
educational research and policy? Or, is the real issue of this special issue a collective despair of our own insignificance and obsolescence in the wake of post-truth. Whatever we editors and authors aimed to do, this special issue will not be heard by post-truth adherents and partisans. Perhaps its only contribution is encouragement to stay with the
troubles of a post-truth era, even as we despair the consequences of our research and policy creations.
Inspired by work/think/play in qualitative research, we centered the idea of “play” in a qualitat... more Inspired by work/think/play in qualitative research, we centered the idea of “play” in a qualitative research project to explore
what proceeding from the idea of work/think/play might look like and accomplish. We pursued play in an experimental
qualitative inquiry over dinner one night at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
Our article centers on one work/think/play inquiry three of us conducted. Through a playful account of how play unfolded
in our work/think/play inquiry that evening, we explore research play as generative, deadly, and censored in the context
of neoliberalism and other terrors. We reflect on what (good) play does in qualitative research, what our work/think/
play/birth/death/terror/qualitative/research accomplished, if anything. Maybe research play is vital, what keeps us fit to
do critical qualitative research. Yet research play moves (well) beyond normative rules of much qualitative research. Is it
worth the risk? Can we know? Even after?
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Papers by Jennifer Wolgemuth
for youth with disabilities’ in 2012. Despite its success, interviews with 10
review team members revealed dissatisfaction with the process and
indifference to its outcomes. The purpose of our analysis was to examine
how the systematic review process itself led to review team members’
feelings of indifference, resignation, and pessimism. Drawing on the
writings of Henry Giroux, Gert Biesta, and Hanna Arendt that warn of the
death of democracy and the rise of totalitarianism, we explored how the
systematic review certification process, examinations, rules, and
structures deadened democratic deliberation and critique necessary, we
argue, to conducting good educational science. We end with a call for
systematic reviews in education whose researchers, products, and
processes remain ethically oriented to keeping democracy alive.
theoretical thematic analysis of the interview data to understand the rituals and ideologies driving the local enactments of RTI. Main findings involved a compliance-driven RTI, and deficit based interpretations of students’ poor responses to inadequate Tier 2/3 supports. Tiers became a typology for classifying students similar to special education labels. These findings provide a glimpse into RTI’s appropriation into the existing system. We discuss recommendations to help consultants develop transformative anti-oppressive practice.
particular, stay-at-home dads (SAHDs) have become more relevant in the lives of
children. Despite these changes, there remains a paucity of research on SAHDs’
experiences with their children’s schools. This qualitative study examined SAHDs’
perceptions of and experiences with their children’s schools. The research identified
three themes: (a) involvement, (b) interactions, and (c) communication. The researchers
discuss implications for elementary school counseling practice as well as future areas of
research.
the things they brought to convey their assessment experiences. Based on analysis of their narratives, we clustered our findings and organised them into a gallery of two thing-centred installations: “Assessment and Tools,” and “Assessment and Arts/Crafts.” Curating the gallery led us to a creative way of articulating concerns about excessive assessment into a thing-interview protocol to be used in future inquiry, involving
interviews with people and things. We showcase these installations, along with interview prompts, as an online exhibition. The aim is to continue the conversation on the future of assessment in connection to purposeful, equity-oriented education.
their moorings in T/truth. Collectively they reconceptualize educational research and policy in light of post-truths, anti-science sentiment, and the global rise of right-wing populism. At the same time we editors wonder whether post-truth is given a bad rap. Could post-truth have something productive to offer? What does post-truth open up for
educational research and policy? Or, is the real issue of this special issue a collective despair of our own insignificance and obsolescence in the wake of post-truth. Whatever we editors and authors aimed to do, this special issue will not be heard by post-truth adherents and partisans. Perhaps its only contribution is encouragement to stay with the
troubles of a post-truth era, even as we despair the consequences of our research and policy creations.
what proceeding from the idea of work/think/play might look like and accomplish. We pursued play in an experimental
qualitative inquiry over dinner one night at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
Our article centers on one work/think/play inquiry three of us conducted. Through a playful account of how play unfolded
in our work/think/play inquiry that evening, we explore research play as generative, deadly, and censored in the context
of neoliberalism and other terrors. We reflect on what (good) play does in qualitative research, what our work/think/
play/birth/death/terror/qualitative/research accomplished, if anything. Maybe research play is vital, what keeps us fit to
do critical qualitative research. Yet research play moves (well) beyond normative rules of much qualitative research. Is it
worth the risk? Can we know? Even after?
for youth with disabilities’ in 2012. Despite its success, interviews with 10
review team members revealed dissatisfaction with the process and
indifference to its outcomes. The purpose of our analysis was to examine
how the systematic review process itself led to review team members’
feelings of indifference, resignation, and pessimism. Drawing on the
writings of Henry Giroux, Gert Biesta, and Hanna Arendt that warn of the
death of democracy and the rise of totalitarianism, we explored how the
systematic review certification process, examinations, rules, and
structures deadened democratic deliberation and critique necessary, we
argue, to conducting good educational science. We end with a call for
systematic reviews in education whose researchers, products, and
processes remain ethically oriented to keeping democracy alive.
theoretical thematic analysis of the interview data to understand the rituals and ideologies driving the local enactments of RTI. Main findings involved a compliance-driven RTI, and deficit based interpretations of students’ poor responses to inadequate Tier 2/3 supports. Tiers became a typology for classifying students similar to special education labels. These findings provide a glimpse into RTI’s appropriation into the existing system. We discuss recommendations to help consultants develop transformative anti-oppressive practice.
particular, stay-at-home dads (SAHDs) have become more relevant in the lives of
children. Despite these changes, there remains a paucity of research on SAHDs’
experiences with their children’s schools. This qualitative study examined SAHDs’
perceptions of and experiences with their children’s schools. The research identified
three themes: (a) involvement, (b) interactions, and (c) communication. The researchers
discuss implications for elementary school counseling practice as well as future areas of
research.
the things they brought to convey their assessment experiences. Based on analysis of their narratives, we clustered our findings and organised them into a gallery of two thing-centred installations: “Assessment and Tools,” and “Assessment and Arts/Crafts.” Curating the gallery led us to a creative way of articulating concerns about excessive assessment into a thing-interview protocol to be used in future inquiry, involving
interviews with people and things. We showcase these installations, along with interview prompts, as an online exhibition. The aim is to continue the conversation on the future of assessment in connection to purposeful, equity-oriented education.
their moorings in T/truth. Collectively they reconceptualize educational research and policy in light of post-truths, anti-science sentiment, and the global rise of right-wing populism. At the same time we editors wonder whether post-truth is given a bad rap. Could post-truth have something productive to offer? What does post-truth open up for
educational research and policy? Or, is the real issue of this special issue a collective despair of our own insignificance and obsolescence in the wake of post-truth. Whatever we editors and authors aimed to do, this special issue will not be heard by post-truth adherents and partisans. Perhaps its only contribution is encouragement to stay with the
troubles of a post-truth era, even as we despair the consequences of our research and policy creations.
what proceeding from the idea of work/think/play might look like and accomplish. We pursued play in an experimental
qualitative inquiry over dinner one night at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
Our article centers on one work/think/play inquiry three of us conducted. Through a playful account of how play unfolded
in our work/think/play inquiry that evening, we explore research play as generative, deadly, and censored in the context
of neoliberalism and other terrors. We reflect on what (good) play does in qualitative research, what our work/think/
play/birth/death/terror/qualitative/research accomplished, if anything. Maybe research play is vital, what keeps us fit to
do critical qualitative research. Yet research play moves (well) beyond normative rules of much qualitative research. Is it
worth the risk? Can we know? Even after?