Teachers’ Perceptions of Childcare and Preschool Expulsion

Previous research outlines the correlates of childcare expulsion in the USA, yet researchers know little about how these correlates produce expulsion. This in‐depth qualitative analysis of 30 childcare providers’ accounts of expulsion finds a patterned process to expulsion: Teachers search for causes and solutions to challenging behaviours. When interventions fail, overwhelmed teachers shift their focus from ‘struggling’ children to ‘bad families’. Once the explanation of behaviour changes from within to outside of the child, expulsion is imminent. Interventions in teachers’ understandings, not only in children's behaviours, are discussed as a possible way to reduce expulsion.     

The Ethnographer and the IRB: Comment on Kevin D. Haggerty, “Ethics Creep: Governing Social Science Research in the Name of Ethics”

Qualitative Sociology -     

Forbidden Knowledge: Public Controversy and the Production of Nonknowledge1

Sociologists, philosophers, and historians of science tend to focus their attention on the production of knowledge. More recently, scholars have begun to investigate more fully the structures and processes that impede the production of knowledge. This article draws on interviews conducted with 41 academic researchers to present a phenomenological examination of “forbidden knowledge”—a phrase that refers to knowledge considered too sensitive, dangerous, or taboo to produce. Forbidden knowledge has traditionally been understood as a set of formal controls on what ought not be known. We argue that the social processes that create forbidden knowledge are embedded in the everyday practices of working scientists. The narrative legacies of past controversies in science are of particular importance, as they serve as a tool that working scientists use to justify, construct, and hide their acceptance of forbidden knowledge. As a result, the precise contents of forbidden knowledge are fluid, fuzzy, essentially contested, specialty specific, locally created, and enforced.     

Between badness and sickness: Reconsidering medicalization for high risk children and youth

Most of the sociological literature about “troubling” children and youth focuses on how the scientific authority of medical experts, with a discourse of sickness, has come to displace the moral authority of justice enforcement officials and their rhetoric of badness as arbiters of childhood pathology. Yet my experience working with high-risk children and youth during a post-MSW fellowship strongly suggests that discourses of badness have not supplanted discourses of sickness. Indeed, these discourses remain deeply intertwined with implications for the way we conceptualize troubling children and youth, for the treatment we prescribe, and for how children and youth understand themselves. Discussing two composite cases to illustrate how negotiations of badness and sickness unfold, I argue that shifts in attributions of badness and sickness follow predictable patterns generally occurring in response to: (1) changes in the context (whether the child is at home, school, or in a treatment setting); (2) changes in an actor's interests or role (parents may attribute troubling behaviors as badness at home but frame them as sickness with people outside the family); and/or (3) changes in external structures of time (e.g. the end of the school year or the end of a Medicaid authorization). In conclusion, I consider the implications of partial medicalization and these patterns of narrative negotiations for future research and practice.     

Training for efficiency: work, time, and systems-based practice in medical residency

Medical residency is a period of intense socialization with a heavy workload. Previous sociological studies have identified efficiency as a practical skill necessary for success. However, many contextual features of the training environment have undergone dramatic change since these studies were conducted. What are the consequences of these changes for the socialization of residents to time management and the development of a professional identity? Based on observations of and interviews with internal medicine residents at three training programs, we find that efficiency is both a social norm and strategy that residents employ to manage a workload for which the demand for work exceeds the supply of time available to accomplish it. We found that residents struggle to be efficient in the face of seemingly intractable "systems" problems. Residents work around these problems, and in doing so develop a tolerance for organizational vulnerabilities.     

Peer-Learning Networks in Social Work Doctoral Education: An Interdisciplinary Model

Peer-learning networks (PLN) can be valuable tools for doctoral students. Participation in these networks can aid in the completion of the dissertation, lead to increased scholarship productivity, and assist in student retention. Yet, despite the promise of PLNs, few studies have documented their effect on social work doctoral education. This article explores aspects of an interdisciplinary PLN focused on child welfare. This study used a questionnaire with scaled survey items and open-ended questions to examine the use, benefits, and challenges to participating in the PLN. After a brief review of the literature, this article presents findings from the study, discusses the implications for social work education, and concludes by explicating strategies for developing PLNs in social work education programs.