Critical Qualitative Inquiry as an Avenue for Critical Public Policy Knowledge and Change

Abstract

The broad goal of this special issue of Qualitative Inquiry is to demonstrate how critical qualitative inquiry (CQI) can facilitate the performance of justice-oriented public policy by conceptualizing movement beyond the logic of policy as prescription. The articles demonstrate the multiple possibilities generated through CQI for rethinking ethical perspectives, discourse practices, and forms of inclusion and policymaking processes, as well as research methods. Furthermore, authors in this special issue illustrate ways that CQI can lead to reconceptualizations of conventional research practices, knowledge and perspectives that dominate fields of study, and forms of communication and activism with policymakers. Finally, some of the authors literally use recent pandemic and environmental disaster circumstances to call for rethinking the ethics and actions that ground CQI.