Challenges and opportunities when using the exemplar methodology to study outliers in education

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of the exemplar methodology (ExM) as a method for selecting exemplars in education research. ExM is a systematic approach to selecting outliers that can be used to education researchers who investigate outliers to better understand phenomena among students, teachers, schools, and communities. While ExM is prevalent in development psychology and its use is growing in other social science fields, it is not yet frequently used in education. Selecting outliers while maintaining validity requires a methodological approach. When there are not established standards for exemplarity, ExM provides a step-by-step approach to choosing exemplars to study. While there are great opportunities in using ExM, investigating outliers comes with inherent challenges; this paper examines those challenges and describes how education researchers using ExM can mitigate them.