Diffracting Enfolding Futures Critical Inquiry in Quantitative Educational Research

This article demonstrates an alternative ontological and epistemological approach to critical inquiry with quantitative methods. By building on new materialists thought, the critical possibilities of quantification are reconsidered via a diffractive methodology. By diffractively reading through multiple sources of data the article demonstrates how to critically analyze the multiplicity of "difference" in parenting practices. The diffracted results point toward the ways in which parenting practices are a result of myriad forces that cannot be reduced to pathology or deficiency but rather convey the inheritance of constraining and disenabling sociocultural and historical conditions. Concluding remarks suggests the quantitative turn for critical inquiry in educational research.