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This article provides a scoping review of the nascent empirical literature on professional learning for MTSS. We used a systematic search strategy to find studies on the impact of professional learning on educator and implementation outcomes. Seventy-nine studies utilizing a variety of designs were included. We found that research most frequently evaluated training and professional learning community focused interventions in elementary schools. We also observed strong alignment between professional learning interventions and the MTSS model studied, research design used, outcomes evaluated, and methodological rigor (e.g., Professional Learning Communities tended to be evaluated using qualitative methods that varied in rigor). Studies evaluated educator knowledge, skills, and dispositions, as well as implementation of the practices that comprise MTSS; however, educator aspirations were rarely evaluated. Moreover, few studies comprehensively evaluated the relations among professional learning and educator knowledge, skills, and dispositions and how those variables interacted to impact implementation. We call for more rigorous research on the impact of professional learning for MTSS and on factors that facilitate and hinder effectiveness.

A team of systematic reviewers successfully completed a government-commissioned review of ‘what works to improve post-school outcomes for youth with disabilities’ in 2012. Despite its success, inte...

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 post-qualitative 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.

The catalyst for this article stems from my reflections (Peter) on the efficacy of collaborative engagement I recently experienced with colleagues in my university and similar institutions in the U...

In this paper we engage Baudrillard’s (1979/1990) writings on seduction to ‘dream up’ seduction as an ethical and generative-destructive force of qualitative research. Beginning with a dreamy conference seduction, we argue that seduction keeps us qualitative researchers thinking, moving, risking, and being passionate about our work and each other. As a playful, sometimes frivolous, yet deeply terrifying process, seduction moves us beyond ourselves and into theoretical unknowns; enables us to risk ourselves in ethically listening to others’ truths. We show and argue that conferences can be ripe spaces for the spread of contagious sapiosexuality and urge qualitative researchers to experiment and play with conference seductions.

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?

The emergence of critical autism studies has fueled efforts to interrogate how autistic people are studied and described in academic literature. While there is a call for research that promotes better well-being for autistic people, little attention has been paid to the concept of well-being itself. Just as the medical model limits critical understandings of autism in the academic literature, so too may psychological accounts of well-being limit, rather than expand, possibilities of living a good life for autistic people. The purpose of this critical review was to identify and critique how well-being in autistic adults is constructed in research. Based on a systematic search of peer-reviewed empirical research published from 2013 to 2020, we identified 63 articles that involved direct data collection with autistic adults and focused on well-being constructs such as quality of life, life satisfaction, and happiness. We examined the articles using the techniques of critical discourse analysis to discern assumptions underlying constructions of autistic well-being, with special attention to the axiological and teleological contributions of autistic perspectives in the research and writing processes. We identified several approaches through which the literature constructed autistic well-being: (1) well-being as an objective uncontested variable, (2) well-being as personal and not fixed, (3) well-being that warrants a specific measure for the autistic population, and (4) well-being as a situated account that privileges and centers autistic people's perspectives. We subject these accounts to critical analysis, pointing to how they limit and open life possibilities for autistic people. We recommend that researchers and practitioners critically reflect on how they engage autistic adults and use their input to create works that support well-being in ways that are meaningful and ethical to autistic adults, as well as do justice to changing broader narratives of autism in research and society. LAY SUMMARY: WHY WAS THIS STUDY DONE? More autistic people and researchers have advocated to study autism in critical and positive ways. While it is important to promote better well-being for autistic people, little is known about what well-being actually means to them. WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY? The purpose of our critical review was to identify how the concept of well-being in autistic people is understood and described in academic literature. We also critiqued how well-being research considers the input and perspectives of autistic adults. WHAT DID WE DO? We systematically searched for research articles published between 2013 and 2020. We identified 63 articles that involved direct data collection with autistic adults and focused on well-being and related concepts such as quality of life, life satisfaction, and happiness. We analyzed the articles by focusing on how they used language to describe well-being in autistic adults and how they valued the data collected from these adults. WHAT DID WE FIND? We identified several ways that article authors described their understanding of autistic well-being: (1) well-being as an objective and uncontested object, (2) well-being is personal and can vary in nature, (3) well-being warrants a measure that considers opinions of autistic people, and (4) well-being as very specific to autistic people's subjective perspectives. We critically analyzed how these different understandings limit or open life possibilities for autistic people's well-being. HOW WILL THIS WORK HELP AUTISTIC PEOPLE? We recommend that researchers critically reflect on how they engage autistic adults and use their input in research. Promoting well-being needs to be meaningful and ethical to autistic adults. Research also needs to advocate for social justice to challenge how the majority in society understands or misunderstands autistic people.

Stay-at-home dads (SAHDs) have become more prevalent in today’s society. Despite these changes, there remains a paucity of research on the mental health needs of SAHDs. This qualitative study examined SAHDs’ social experiences and mental health needs. The research identified three themes: (1) becoming a SAHD, (2) being a SAHD at home, and (3) being a SAHD in society. Implications for mental health counseling practices and future areas of research are discussed.

In this article we demonstrate the use and usefulness of new materialism as an analytic lens in applied qualitative inquiry. Intended as a possible entry point to applied inquiry after the ontological turn, we draw on Barad’s agential realism to analyze three existing transcripts of focus groups conducted with healthcare workers, traditional birth attendants, and mothers to explore the postnatal care referral behavior of traditional birth attendants in Nigeria. We describe elements of our data analysis process including deep reading, summoning of the inquiry, delaying the inquiry, attuning to glowing data, and writing. We explore how the research phenomenon enacted agential cuts that distinguished participants (healthcare workers, traditional birth attendants, and mothers) and relayed their participation in the focus group. We show how the inclusion of the mothers’ babies and the transcripts themselves made available some understandings at the possible exclusion of others. Our Baradian, new materialist analysis shows the inextricability of interview materials (things) and language (discourse) and demonstrates that all applied research is bounded and affected by its material conditions. As a point of entry, we hope our illustration sensitizes applied qualitative researchers to how research decisions, research materials, and research cultures produce what can be known and lived within and beyond the research encounter.

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...

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 Žižek and Gallop in an analysis of (potentially) offensive classroom practices and events. They conclude that (Žižek 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.

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.

Adolescents spend approximately one-third of their day at school. With the growing prevalence of adolescent asthma, 1 in every 10 adolescents copes with asthma throughout the day, including in the school environment. Yet, little is known about the school experiences of adolescent students with asthma. Guided by the social-ecological model, this study aimed to explore the links between asthma and school experiences in middle and high school as perceived by students with asthma. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 adolescents with asthma aged 12 to 17 who attended middle or high school around the mid-west area of Florida. Students shared insights on their school experiences and academic performance. Data were analyzed and interpreted using thematic analysis. Four overarching and intertwined themes shaped the school experiences of students with asthma: 1. Asthma control and management; 2. Social support; 3. Asthma knowledge and awareness; and 4. Accommodation of health and academic needs. Study findings suggest addressing the school disparities of adolescent students with asthma through a comprehensive, multi-level approach. Schools should create asthma education opportunities, improve the school system and environmental accommodations, enhance asthma control, and increase continuous social support by peers and school personnel.

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?

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.

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.

In this article, we explore transformative interviewing through the lens of new materialism. Rather than viewing transformation through a humanist perspective that centralizes a transcendent self, we draw upon Barad’s agential realism to reconsider transformation following the ontological turn. Thinking with agential realism, we engaged two interview studies, one on biracialism and one on masculinity, to demonstrate how the materiality of our interviews (e.g., research bodies, computer programs, questionnaires) intra-acted with our participants to both facilitate and hinder our attempts at transformation. We conclude by theorizing transformation as a type of purposeful entanglement that proceeds from the material-discursive intra-actions of our inquiries.

We explored how academic literature constructs the ‘worker with autism.’ Drawing on a systematic review of transition to work for youth with disabilities, we analyzed how 17 articles constructed ‘autism,’ ‘work,’ and the ‘worker with autism.’ We identified two argumentative approaches: the intervention story and the complex story. Intervention stories centered autism as a problem in need of treatment and work as a simple, positive endeavor. Complex stories offered various and more positive accounts of autism alongside broader notions of work. We recommend that academics experiment with writing which expands work (and career) possibilities for youth situated on the autism spectrum.

Recent studies indicate that the majority of school psychologists’ time continues to be dedicated to SPED related activities. Despite ongoing calls for school psychologists to expand their roles, why many practitioners do not deliver more comprehensive services is not well understood. This qualitative study investigated facilitators of and barriers to comprehensive and integrated services using the National Association of School Psychologists Model for Comprehensive and Integrated School Psychological Services as the guiding framework. Thirteen full-time, school-based practitioners from across the US participated in semi-structured interviews. Constant-comparative analysis was used to generate themes. Results indicated that practitioners experienced a number of systemic barriers to (e.g., heavy caseload; inconsistent district policies, priorities, and role definitions; lack of stakeholder involvement) and facilitators of (e.g., resources, graduate training and professional development) comprehensive and integrated service delivery. Participants’ perspectives regarding changes needed to expand their services focused on systemic issues as well. Implications for research and practitioners’ efforts to advocate for systems change are discussed.

In this article, I explore my fantasy qualitative classroom, one that promotes “paradigm driving,” rather than paradigm-driven research. I discuss how paradigm essentialism, ontologization, and idolization, although important to learning qualitative research, get in the way of creative, flexible, and ambiguous approaches to research design. I share strategies for disrupting these forces in the classroom. My exploration highlights the challenges of teaching with multiple epistemologies in mind. I conclude by welcoming failure as necessary to revise my ideals and to stave off the fascism involved in imposing a utopian fantasy and looking forward to how I will work with failure the next time.

Objective: The purpose of this article is to explain how central points developed in Dewey’s 1916 Democracy and Education provide the rationale needed to adopt institutional and policy recommendations made by Grubb and Lazerson in their 2004 book, The Education Gospel: The Economic Power of Schooling. Method: The central points of Grubb and Lazerson’s work, and the policy agenda offered to guide reforms, are reviewed. Results: The authors describe how a Deweyan view of education and democracy may provide the motivation and guidance needed to move forward on the Grubb and Lazerson agenda to benefit community college vocational education. Contributions: The argument advanced in this article reveals that a meaningful reconstruction of community college vocational education will require implementation of institutional reforms and public policy reforms. This reconstruction will also require, however, a normative vision to motivate policy makers, educators, and citizens.

To address students’ poor literacy outcomes, an intervention using a computer-based literacy tool, ABRACADABRA, was implemented in 6 Northern Australia primary schools. A pretest, posttest parallel group, single blind multisite randomized controlled trial was conducted with 308 students between the ages of 4 and 8 years old (M age = 5.8 years, SD = 0.8 years). Findings suggested that computer-based instruction under controlled conditions can improve student literacy, especially for Indigenous students at risk of reading difficulties. The authors examine the fidelity with which the computer-based literacy tool was implemented and the impact of implementation fidelity measures on student outcomes. Student exposure to and use of the literacy tool, and quality of instruction and lesson delivery, were analyzed for their influence on students’ literacy outcomes. Implementation fidelity measures accounted for between 1.8% and 15% of the variance of intervention students’ scores.

We used a multiple-case study to investigate participants’ experiences in interviews from six qualitative studies that differed in interview orientations, designs, methods, participants, and topics. Roulston’s (2010a, 2010b) interview orientation heuristic guided our ‘paradigm-driven’ analysis of participants’ experiences. We found no differences in participants’ articulation of benefits and risks by interview orientation. Participants’ experiences differed based on the opportunity to reflect on their interview experiences, the sensitivity of the topic explored, and the number of interviews conducted. We discuss the implications of our findings for ‘paradigm-driven’ qualitative research and suggest ethical questions qualitative interview researchers can ask to maximize the benefits of their interviews.

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.

IntroductionA multitiered system of supports (MTSS) represents a widely adopted public health approach to education in the USA. Researchers agree professional learning is critical for educators to implement the critical components of MTSS; however, professional learning approaches vary in their designs and targeted outcomes. While researchers increasingly focus their inquiries on professional learning for MTSS, no systematic research review exists.ObjectivesThe primary objectives for this mixed-methods review are to (1) understand how professional learning focused on MTSS has been operationalised (2) determine the impact of professional learning on educator (eg, knowledge) and implementation (eg, data-based decision-making processes) outcomes and (3) understand the contextual variables that influence professional learning in the USA. We aim to determine which elements of professional learning improve educators’ capacity to implement MTSS.Methods and analysisWe will include studies that use quantitative and qualitative methods. PsycInfo, PubMed, CIHAHL and ERIC will be the primary research databases used to search for studies published from January 1997 to May 2018. We also will search the US Institute for Educational Sciences and Office of Special Education Programs websites, ProQuest, Google Scholar, Science Watch and MSN. Finally, we will search the proceedings of relevant conferences, examine the reference lists of studies that pass full screening and contact authors for additional work. Data extraction will include participant demographics, intervention details, study design, outcomes, analyses and key findings. We will conduct a quality assessment and analyse the data using effect size and thematic analyses.Ethics and disseminationInstitutional review board or ethics approval is not needed for this review of already published works. We will disseminate the findings through presentations at state, national and international conferences; presentations to stakeholders and agencies; publication in peer-reviewed journals; and posts to organisational and agency websites.

This paper details a narrative analysis strategy called critical resistance analysis (CRA). The aim of a CRA is to bring forward the kinds of subjects participants draw on when talking about themselves in narrative interviews and to make explicit how those subjects are resisted and desired. The CRA is distinguished from other narrative analyses of self in that it focuses on resistance in both its structural, anti-hegemonic and ‘poststructural’, self-refusal forms. The latter kind of resistance is what Hoy (2005) refers to as ‘critical’ resistance; the desire to undo oneself. A CRA looks for participant resistance in narrative and antenarrative (Boje, 2001) data. Antenarratives are incomplete stories that are often too fragmented to analyze using traditional narrative methods and can be seen as powerful examples of meaning-making in progress. A CRA newly brings an antenarrative understanding to the study of self in four analytic foci: deconstruction trace, discourse-argument, resistance and intersubjectivity analysis. Together these analytic foci reveal the subjects narrative participants seek (not) to be and afford a more complex understanding of how participants struggle with and against themselves.

In many western countries, identifiable populations of children read below age-expectations, and the need for effective interventions remains pressing. Indigenous populations across the globe tend to have reading outcomes lower than comparative general populations. This is a critical issue in Australia's Northern Territory where Indigenous students are far less likely to meet minimum reading standards. There is some evidence to suggest that computer-based instruction may be of particular benefit to struggling readers. To redress reading disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, a multisite single-blind randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of the ABRACADABRA web-based reading tool, http://abralite.concordia.ca, on reading, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness was conducted in Northern Territory, Australian primary schools with 164 intervention and 148 control (regular instruction) children. The total sample was 28% Indigenous. Results revealed that all intervention group students made significant gains in phonological awareness (d?=?.37) and phoneme-grapheme knowledge over control group peers (d?=?.37). Indigenous students gained significantly more per hour of instruction than non-Indigenous students in phonological awareness and early literacy skills. Results suggest that ABRACADABRA prevents lags in foundational literacy experienced by poor readers including Indigenous students. ABRA better than regular instruction for phonological awareness and letter sounds.ABRA as good as regular instruction for early literacy skills and word reading.ABRA and regular instruction teachers gave similar quality literacy lessons.Indigenous students gained more per hour of intervention on phonological awareness.

This paper explores the challenges of conducting systematic research, using our experiences of conducting a study to evaluate the effectiveness of ABRACADABRA, an online tool for early childhood literacy instruction as the contextual framework. By discussing how the research team resolved such perennial issues as high teacher turnover, low or erratic Indigenous student attendance, difficulties with collecting reliable data on student outcomes, and the time and funding required to travel long distances, we show how rigorous research might still be conducted, to counter the usual proffering of such challenges as reasons why experimental research should not be attempted. Without minimizing the dimension of the logistical and funding challenges facing the conducting of experimental research in regional and remote settings, we end with an appeal that such work be prioritized, lest already disadvantaged education settings suffer further neglect in terms of national research priorities.

This research conducted in primary schools in Northern Australia evaluated the effectiveness of the web‐based program ABRACADABRA (ABRA) as a tool to complement early childhood literacy instruction in an Australian and Indigenous context. A further component of this research was to monitor implementation fidelity. The ABRA training was built around professional development best practices to address the challenges of providing ongoing training in remote areas. Teachers attended a one‐day workshop that trained them in the use of ABRA, and continued learning was reinforced by pairing teachers with a literacy coach. Data were gathered through an implementation fidelity measure, researcher field notes, focus groups, teacher logbooks, and the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation tool. This paper outlines challenges and successes that the researcher/coaches experienced while supporting teachers.

As part of an evaluation of a web-based early literacy intervention, ABRACADABRA, a small exploratory study was conducted over one term in three primary schools in the Northern Territory. Of particular concern was the relationship between attendance and the acquisition of early literacy skills of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. Using the GRADE literacy assessment, it was found that students made significant gains in a number of early literacy skills (e.g. phonological awareness skills and vocabulary processing). Classroom attendance was strongly and positively correlated with the acquisition of phonological awareness skills and early literacy skills (e.g. letter recognition, word identification processing). Indigenous children attended class significantly less frequently than non-Indigenous children and performed significantly worse overall, particularly with regard to phonological processing tasks. In light of these findings, it is suggested irregular attendance contributed to the Indigenous stud...