Finally Making Good on the Promise of Qualitative Research in Special Education? A Response to the Special Issue

A Contradictory Affair With Personal Meaning Making

There is no question that special education has been resistant, in its flagship publications, to including studies based on qualitative methodology. The introduction to this special issue, as well as Trainor and Graue’s analysis, cite the incontrovertible data regarding the low frequency with which qualitative studies appear in traditional special education journals. The fact that this special issue itself is viewed as a notable accomplishment attests to the dimensions of the problem.

As indicated earlier in this issue, restricted views of what constitutes evidence, as well as the preferences of funders, are no doubt implicated in this situation. Moreover, the close relationship between federal funding and special education research is longstanding. This is not meant to discount the role such funding can play in moving the field ahead. What is particularly interesting, however, is that the very foundation of qualitative research, namely, making meaning from day-to-day phenomena that define our lives (Hatch, 2002; Merriam, 2009; Patton, 2002), is often what special education draws on to corral support for its own research and practice efforts. That is, the stories of children and youth who have disabilities, the struggles of their parents, and/or their teachers, the challenges of their transitions to adult life—these are often what capture the attention of those who have control over both purse strings and legislation. In rigorously conducted qualitative research, we have the opportunity to generate knowledge from what can be thought of as the disciplined telling of stories—disciplined, that is, by a variety of rigorous methodological approaches, including the new criteria suggested by Trainor and Graue, and from a variety of positions from within the qualitative paradigm. Implicitly, then, special education as a field has chosen to live with this contradiction—privileging story when it is convenient and instrumental politically, marginalizing it when it appears to cross a paradigmatic line in terms of research methodology. We think the challenge of this contradiction would be worth exploring as part of any new call for elevating the status of qualitative research.

Interestingly, however, it is clear that such institutional hesitance has not actually stopped special educators from conducting qualitative research. We see this not only in the 50 submissions for this issue of RASE, and in the specific empirical studies that were selected, but also in qualitative studies that, with increasing regularity, appear in journals outside of special education in the United States and internationally, as well as in international special education journals. Although we certainly place high value on looking both inside and outside of special education for methodological models, we also know that the default for busy scholars tends to be reading the major publications within one’s own field—precisely the journals that are not now hospitable to qualitative studies. One could view this situation as something of a silver lining—that is, special educators who are committed to qualitative methods may regularly and successfully look to venues outside of special education as outlets for their publications, thereby provoking a sort of “methodological inclusion,” the result being that issues related to special education studied using qualitative methods are brought into view in the wider education community. The problem is that the prevailing status quo within the field deprives scholars in special education of continuous, routine exposure to what this methodology offers in terms of helping to solve the enduring problems of our work. The five empirical studies presented together here denote an important step toward interrupting that routine.

However, it is not simply that qualitative research is missing—which in and of itself is problematic—but it is also a question of how far into qualitative research methodology special educators are willing to reach. In accepting the challenge to be as “nimble and agile” as possible in the choices of methodology (as noted in the introduction to this special issue), it may be important not only to nudge the field of special education toward being more open to and welcoming of qualitative methods, but also to be open to the full range of possibilities it holds. Collectively, the studies in this issue exemplify several recognizable forms of qualitative research, forms that indeed provide important results through the use of thematic analyses, narratives representing the voices of underserved individuals, and a critical lens to frame and inquire into issues related to equity and empowerment. Not represented, in contrast, are the poststructuralists, who may push the boundaries of what is typically accepted as qualitative research. Special educators have worked with some of these more experimental forms of qualitative research, for example, poetic transcription (Smith, 1999) or autoethnography (Pugach & Blanton, 2012; Smith, 2013)—qualitative approaches that also have the potential to contribute to the larger program of the “meta understanding of causality” referenced by Trainor and Leko (2014).

We recognize that increasing the frequency with which more conventional high-quality qualitative work is published in the traditional special education literature would in and of itself represent tremendous progress, and publishing this set of studies together is a step toward promoting that goal. Perhaps it may be premature, especially in an era of scientifically based research and evidence-based practice, to ask even more of the field. But once the door is open to research that is anchored in making meaning of the experience of individuals with disabilities and the institutional structures that limit their learning and success, why not deliberately avail ourselves of all the ways qualitative research can be enacted, both more and less conventional—to enable the broadest interpretation of the meaning of disability and special education as we seek effective solutions?

Sharpening the Consideration of Methodological Rigor

A second issue we wish to raise in the context of this challenge to the field is how far to press the issue of transparency to ensure that methodological rigor is as clearly rendered as possible. As the studies included in this special issue illustrate, the expansiveness of qualitative research has resulted in an array of methods and approaches to inquiry that allow scholars broad latitude in tailoring their studies for specific purposes and contexts. Longstanding qualitative approaches such as case study, narrative, ethnography, participatory action research, as well as phenomenology and grounded theory, are all known for their characteristic processes and obligations to ensure rigor. But emerging from these rich traditions of fieldwork (and from an analysis of their limitations as well) are a proliferation of new strategies, subsets, and methods, which have led to a rapid explosion of methodological choices and jargon—perhaps best exemplified by the continually expanding size and scope of the Handbook of Qualitative Research (with its “doorstop” third edition, Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). Although there are certainly benefits to a field of methodological endeavor that is evolving and growing, the sheer quantity of existing conceptions, terms, and sub-methods can be overwhelming and distracting, with potential for leaving unanticipated, implicit gaps in understanding—especially for novice or naïve readers of this approach to scholarly inquiry.

On reading these five empirical studies, and amid the meticulous attention to methodological detail they represent, they still may—in different ways—miss revealing certain methodological details that readers need to know, especially for those who may be less familiar with and/or more skeptical about the intricacies of qualitative methodology. To illustrate places where yet a little more methodological transparency might serve to sharpen these studies, we would like to pose a few modest questions in relationship to each one:

Our goal in raising questions regarding some of these methodological issues is, more than anything else, to remind each of us, as qualitative researchers who conduct our studies in a field that is already highly skeptical about its value, that we are both reporting on our research and educating our field about it. In the context of methodological rigor, even inadvertent omissions can function as missed opportunities relative to the educative part of our work. These examples illustrate Trainor and Graue’s observation that considerations of transparency take place throughout a study. Here, we see those considerations during what Glesne (2011) referred to as the pre-study phase, such as in site selection, through data collection and analysis. In closing some of these “transparency gaps,” qualitative researchers in special education can go even further in assuring that the community of both readers and practitioners of qualitative research can confidently pick up where previous authors of qualitative studies have left off.

Initiating a Sustained Dialogue

With this issue of RASE, Trainor and Leko have appealed to the field to “aspire to paradigm expansion” and more fully embrace qualitative research—that is, to magnify the possibilities for what are considered the routinely acceptable boundaries of research methods, while painstakingly attending to methodological rigor. In our response, we have tried to build on that challenge by suggesting that scholars carefully interrogate the resistance to qualitative research at the same time we practice transparency as a way to ensure methodological rigor that is as finely tuned as possible.

The question of qualitative research and special education has come up periodically over the decades, but momentum has never been established in a way that has led to action in terms of creating significant within-field publication opportunities. We hope this special issue initiates a sustained dialogue—rather than a periodic one—both on the meaning of rigor itself and on the willingness and capacity of the field of special education to open its publication arms to the full complement of qualitative research philosophies and methods. We welcome this dialogue and the potential action we hope will follow, and look forward to participating in it, as it is a dialogue that is long past due.