Start Here, Or Here, No Here: Introductions to Rethinking Education Policy and Methodology in a Post-Truth Era

Authors

  • Jennifer R. Wolgemuth University of South Florida
  • Mirka Koro-Ljungberg Arizona State University
  • Travis M. Marn Southern Connecticut State University
  • Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie Sam Houston State University
  • Shaun M. Dougherty Vanderbilt University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.26.4357

Keywords:

post-truth, methodology, education policy, fake news

Abstract

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.

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Author Biographies

Jennifer R. Wolgemuth, University of South Florida

Jennifer R. Wolgemuth is an Associate Professor in Measurement and Research at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on the socio-politics of social science research. Her work illuminates and disrupts categorical accounts of the contexts, ethics, and outcomes of social science research, including their personal and social impacts on researchers, participants, and those who shepherd research evidence into policy and practice.

Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Arizona State University

Mirka Koro-Ljungberg (Ph.D., University of Helsinki) is a Professor of qualitative research at the Arizona State University. Her scholarship operates in the intersection of methodology, philosophy, and socio-cultural critique and her work aims to contribute to methodological knowledge, experimentation, and theoretical development across various traditions associated with qualitative research. She has published in various qualitative and educational journals and she is the author of Reconceptualizing qualitative research: Methodologies without methodology (2016) published by SAGE and co-editor of Disrupting data in qualitative inquiry: Entanglements with the Post-Critical and Post-Anthropocentric (2017) by Peter Lang.

Travis M. Marn, Southern Connecticut State University

Travis M. Marn (Ph.D., University of South Florida) is a Professor in the Curriculum & Learning Department at Southern Connecticut State University where he teaches child development and educational psychology.  His scholarship focuses on philosophically informed empirical accounts of performative identities, employing new materialism and posthumanism in psychological research, and contributing to the development of qualitative and post-qualitative methods and methodologies.

Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, Sam Houston State University

Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie is Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Sam Houston State University, where he teaches doctoral-level courses in qualitative research, quantitative research, and mixed research. Further, he is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg and an Honorary Professor at the University of South Africa. His research areas primarily involve social and behavioral science topics, including disadvantaged and under-served populations such as minorities, children living in war zones, students with special needs, and juvenile delinquents. Also, he has conducted numerous research studies on factors that predict educational achievement at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Additionally, he writes extensively on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodological topics applicable to multiple disciplines within the field of the social and behavioral sciences.

Shaun M. Dougherty, Vanderbilt University

Shaun M. Dougherty is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Education, Peabody College of Education & Human Development, Vanderbilt University. His work focuses on applied quantitative analysis of education policies and programs, equity, and career and technical education.

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Published

2018-11-19

How to Cite

Wolgemuth, J. R., Koro-Ljungberg, M., Marn, T. M., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Dougherty, S. M. (2018). Start Here, Or Here, No Here: Introductions to Rethinking Education Policy and Methodology in a Post-Truth Era. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 26, 145. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.26.4357

Issue

Vol. 26 (2018)

Section

Rethinking Education Policy and Methodology in a Post-truth Era

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