Deeper than Wordplay: A Systematic Review of Critical Quantitative Approaches in Education Research (2007–2021)

Although the critical research cannon is often associated with qualitative scholars, there is a growing number of critical scholars who are refusing positivist-informed quantitative analyses. However, as a growing number of education scholars engaged in critical approaches to quantitative inquiry, instances of conflation began to surface. We understood this conflation as the interchangeable use of the terms quantitative criticalism, QuantCrit, and critical quantitative throughout the literature and even within the same chapter or article. The purpose of our systematic literature review is twofold: (a) to understand how critical approaches to quantitative inquiry emerged as a new paradigm within quantitative methods and (b) whether there is any distinction between quantitative criticalism, QuantCrit, and critical quantitative inquiries or simply interchangeable wordplay. We share how critical quantitative approaches are definite shifts within the quantitative research paradigm, highlight relevant assumptions, and share strategies and future directions for applied practice in this emergent field.