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This article introduces the special issue, “Reclaiming” Disability in Critical Qualitative Research, which aims to center disability and disabled people in critical qualitative research. More particularly, we highlight here how the articles included in this special issue collectively consider new possibilities for the place and practice of critical qualitative methodologies and methods in research involving disabled people. We begin this introduction by discussing the meaning of reclaiming disability and foreground the importance of critical qualitative inquiry. Then, we offer a brief discussion of the interdisciplinary field of disability studies and the fruitful possibilities for its generative intra-action with critical qualitative research. In doing so, we also point to the often taken-for-granted ableist practices that have historically been used in qualitative research. Finally, we offer a brief overview of the articles included in the special issue and conclude with a call for consideration of next steps for the qualitative research community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report findings from a discourse analysis study of reading instruction in eight primary/elementary school classrooms in the United States. Drawing upon discursive psychology, we specifically examined 96 hours of reading comprehension instruction, with a focus on how teachers talked about the body during the instruction and noted how this gave rise to particular constructions of what it means to be a ‘good’ reader and/or learner. We discuss two patterns from the analysis of our data, including: (1) emphasized versus embedded physical control as essential to being a ‘successful’ reader, and (2), implicit physical control and freedom as essential to literacy learning and to students' identities as readers. We conclude by highlighting implications, with a focus on student identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To date, relatively little research has examined the perceptions of children and parents involved in university-assisted partnership programs. In this paper, we present findings from a case study of a university-assisted community school (UACS) afterschool program wherein we interviewed participating students and their parents. We also completed participant observations at the school site and included the perspectives of the two central administrative staff (i.e., the school principal and the afterschool program coordinator), as this served to deepen our understanding. Our findings highlight how the students and parents positioned the UACS afterschool program as being significantly different from the regular school day, while also noting how the program positively shaped the children's lives. Further, we highlight how the administrative staff positioned the university as central to the afterschool program; in contrast, the students and parents did not mention the resources that were bound to the university. We conclude with implications for practitioners and scholars engaged in university-assisted partnership work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integral to the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is the initial assessment through which the existence of a 'problem' is first ascertained. Despite this, there remains limited research on this early part of the diagnostic pathway. In this article, we utilised conversation analysis to examine relevant issues in relation to the practitioner-family interactions that take place within this initial assessment context. Our findings illustrated that parents typically first raised the possibility of the presence of an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis through 'building a case', which professionals were then able to ratify or negate. Furthermore, we found that the assessments unfolded sequentially and clinical decisions were typically reached through a distinctive pattern of interaction. These findings have important implications for clinical practice, including for the study of autism spectrum disorder assessments and diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic family therapy promotes a systemic reframing of individual problems to an understanding of the familial processes influencing family functioning. Parents often attend therapy identifying their child as the key problem, which raises issues of accountability and blame. In this article, we explored the discursive practices used by parents for constructing themselves as ‘good parents’. Using the basic principles of conversation analysis and discursive psychology, we analysed actual therapeutic sessions and found that parents used a range of strategies to display their good parenting. This included directly claiming to be a good parent, illustrating how they act in their child’s best interests, showing that they parent in appropriate ways and by making appeals to scientific rhetoric. It was concluded that family therapists have a challenging task in managing competing versions of events and we discussed implications for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) has not been without controversy, with a pervasive sense of skepticism and resistance towards its adoption by many scholars. Language-based researchers in particular, such as conversation and discourse analysts, have been slow to embrace such tools for their work. In this paper we illustrate how we have used ATLAS.ti to support our own conversation and discourse analysis work, in order to demonstrate how such a tool can be leveraged to complete nine analytic tasks. Tasks and features we describe include, among others, transcribing and synchronizing transcripts with media files, engaging in unmotivated looking through creating quotations, and conducting a close, line by line analysis through writing memos. We illustrate how ATLAS.ti has allowed us to document our analytic decisions in a transparent, reflexive, rigorous and systematic way. We note, too, limitations of the software such as a lack of real-time collaboration support and challenges inherent to the analysis of video and online interactional data. Rather than taking control away from the researcher, we argue that ATLAS.ti enables the analyst to solve a range of methodological challenges, such as working with large data-sets and supporting deeper levels of analysis than is possible by hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The objective was to identify how children's knowledge positions were negotiated in child mental health assessments and how this was managed by the different parties.Methods: The child psychiatry data consisted of 28 video-recorded assessments. A conversation analysis was undertaken to examine the interactional detail between the children, parents, and practitioners.Results: The findings indicated that claims to knowledge were managed in three ways. First, practitioners positioned children as 'experts' on their own health and this was sometimes accepted. Second, some children resisted this epistemic position, claiming not to have the relevant knowledge. Third, some children's claims to knowledge were negotiated and sometimes contested by adult parties who questioned their competence to share relevant information about their lives in accordance with the assessment agenda.Conclusion: Through question design, the practitioner was able to position the child as holding relevant knowledge regarding their situation. The child was able to take up this position or resist it in various ways.Practice Implications: This has important implications for debates regarding children's competence to contribute to mental health interventions. Children are often treated as agents with limited knowledge, yet in the mental health assessment they are directly questioned about their own lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While researchers have used conversation analysis (CA) methods to understand online talk since the 1990s, to date there has been no systematic review of these studies to better understand this methodological development. This article presents a comprehensive literature review of 89 peer-reviewed journal articles reporting findings of empirical studies using CA to understand social interaction online. In this review, we describe who is conducting this type of research, the contexts in which CA has been used to make sense of text-based online talk, and where such studies are being published. We also identify the “fundamental” conversational structures researchers are drawing upon in making sense of online talk as social interaction. Findings show that studies are using CA to understand “mundane” conversational contexts, as well as institutional talk from educational, counseling and workplace settings. The number of such studies are increasing and are being conducted by an international network of researchers across a variety of disciplines. The data is most often described as synchronous or asynchronous, with a slow increase in attention to social media data. Publication outlets are mostly language-based and/methodological journals. Analysis revealed four main aims: (1) comparing online and face-to-face talk, (2) understanding how coherence is maintained, (3) understanding how participants deal with trouble, and (4) understanding how social actions are accomplished asynchronously. This review contributes to the overall understanding of the methodological development of CA, offering useful insights for those interested in using it to understand social interaction as it occurs online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we share the process and practice of integrating a performance ethnography, in the form of a written play, into research methods and education courses, as well as methods-based workshops. We begin by briefly sharing some of the ways in which we have come to position this work within our classroom and instructional workshops and point to its possibilities as a pedagogical approach. We then illustrate the process of introducing this methodological perspective to our students in research courses. We also highlight the implications for introducing alternative, arts-based approaches to data representation to students and describe the impact on their trajectories as producers, critics, and consumers of qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we consider the everyday practices and methodological and theoretical tensions of interdisciplinary, qualitative work. In particular, we discuss the varied interpretations of focus group data from Burundian men and women with refugee status and explore the consequences of representations that result in deficit-based understandings. We highlight how through our research process we learned that following participants, rather than leading with our disciplines, deepened our understanding and complicated our representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]