This lab emphasizes teaching students qualitative research methods (i.e., "deep data"), particularly ethnography, case study, narrative inquiry, grounded theory, and phenomenology. Students in this research group examine issues of peace, multiculturalism, development, inequality, conflict, post-modernity, decolonization, globalization, democracy, and global citizenship in and through education using a variety of qualitative methods.
The lab provides a hub for educational studies students to inquire deeply into the use (and misuse) of qualitative research methods to generate new knowledge and novel applications of scientific knowledge for contemporary society. "Deep data" refers to the use of rigorous qualitative methods and analytical frameworks to access, produce, interpret and critique educational phenomena differently.
The lab highly encourages students to think with and through social theory to investigate educational phenomena today, including issues of de/post-colonialism, posttruth, diffraction/reflexivity, and transrational philosophies. In this vein, many students are drawn to the critical theoretical work of Karen Barad, Pierre Bourdieu, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Raewyn Connell, Michel Foucault, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and Michalinos Zembylas, among others.