Beyond Curricular Enhancement: A Retrospective Case Study of Working Across Institutional Dimensions to Foster Critical Quantitative Methods Training

• In Event: Teaching Critical Quantitative Methods in Higher Education

Abstract

To date, the emerging scholarship on critical approaches to quantitative inquiry in education have, quite naturally, tended toward methodological essays or empirical applications. Across the literature, a consistent characteristic is the profound nuance and skill required to pursue rigorous critical theory and quantitative inquiry in tandem, feasible only with advanced training and experience. Indeed, recent reviews and analysis of the field (Hernández, 2015; Tabron & Thomas, 2023; Wofford & Winkler, 2022) demonstrate how traditional quantitative methods training often reinforce existing power structures and fail to address systemic inequities in education.

It follows that for the critical quantitative project to extend beyond a niche interest area involves a long-term endeavor that goes beyond modularized curricular enhancements. It entails profound changes in graduate students' training and socialization in statistics courses (Tabron & Thomas, 2023; Wofford & Winkler, 2022) plus systemic changes to the inherent interests and aims of predominant teaching and learning regimes. This takes the form of curricular decisions in terms of the larger scope of doctoral training emphasizing inquiry that engages theory, axiology, scholarly rhetoric, and real-world issues, along with human dimensions of interpersonal relations, psychosocial attributes, and student development. Moreover, it involves moving the incentive structures in place, such as faculty development practices and the peer review process, towards necessarily valuing multiple forms of scholarship and fostering reflexivity and mutual interests.

This retrospective case study reports on the initiatives undertaken by faculty members within the education administration department at a large research-intensive university (name omitted for peer review) over the last almost 10 years across these several domains that have influenced the department’s capacity for critical quantitative methods training. The study focuses on curricular endeavors that support many faculty members’ commitments to critical quantitative approaches, but necessarily accounts for activities undertaken for a myriad of other purposes that are informed by and have an important role in enabling integrative and critical approaches to inquiry generally.

This study’s perspective is informed by the collaboration and experiences of colleagues, department and college administrators, and students. The study does not purport to advance an argument of a progressive change process. Rather, the aim is to make the case for the extent of structural change involved and constitute a report of reflective praxis within the messy complexities and sometimes confounding setbacks involved in pursuing a vision for critical quantitative teaching and learning within an institutional context.

Data come from a collaborative and participatory approach, involving faculty members, administrators, and graduate students in the form of enrollment data, thesis content analysis, interviews, reflective dialog among individuals involved, and document analysis of syllabi, policy statements, academic review documents, and more.

The insights from this retrospective case study contribute to the field of critical quantitative methods, through a focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning that is needed to realize many of the transformative goals of the field’s proponents. This study's significance lies in going beyond theoretical developments and empirical applications by shedding light on the complexities of advancing critical quantitative methods in practice.

Author

• Deryl K. Hatch-Tocaimaza, University of Nebraska - Lincoln