Stage 1 — What the data becomes
Raw evidence collected
Educator and leader interviews, card sort placements and reasoning, institutional documents, branched survey responses (~200 educators), retrospective university-student accounts, and structural context from NCES and RAND panels. De-identified before any analysis support; participant responses stay local to the browser in the instrument suite and move only through IRB-approved secure upload.
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Integrated findings analyzed
Two-cycle thematic analysis with friction and threat code layers; descriptive and exploratory quantitative analysis; integration through joint displays recording convergence, divergence, expansion, and silence by research question. Divergence is retained as evidence, not resolved away.
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Refined framework tested
The Pedagogical Friction Framework enters as theory and exits corrected by practitioner evidence — dimensions confirmed, merged, renamed, or reordered according to what participants actually describe. The framework’s utility is an empirical question, not a commitment the data must confirm.
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Translated artifacts usable
Plain-language criteria for distinguishing access support from cognitive bypass; assessment design patterns that reconnect product to process; policy language addressing learning science, not only integrity; PD module outlines; the friction-audit routine demonstrated in this artifact set. The community should not have to read a dissertation to benefit from one.
Stage 2 — Four return tracks
Participant track
- Audience
- Interview, card sort, and survey participants
- Artifacts
- Member-checked theme summaries during analysis; plain-language executive summary at completion
- Channel
- Direct return + public dissertation hub
- Why
- Reciprocity — recruitment through professional networks creates an obligation to return knowledge first to those who produced it
Scholarly track
- Audience
- Researchers in media ecology, learning sciences, AI-in-education
- Artifacts
- Dissertation; findings-stage article extending Miner (2026b); practitioner-adjacent journal submissions
- Channel
- NLU Digital Commons, peer-reviewed venues
- Why
- Moves the framework from conceptual argument to empirically examined contribution
Professional track
- Audience
- EdTech leaders, CTOs, instructional coaches nationally
- Artifacts
- Conference sessions, webinars, committee briefings, articles for member publications
- Channel
- ISTE, CoSN, state affiliates (IETL, ICE), regional consortia — the same networks that produced the sample
- Why
- Findings flow back through the channels that produced the data; the community is national because the condition is
Local / district track
- Audience
- Districts, boards, building leaders, teacher teams
- Artifacts
- PD modules sequenced by friction dimension; policy review templates; the friction-audit protocol; family-facing language about productive struggle
- Channel
- Direct district adoption, consulting, open templates on the hub sites
- Why
- The exosystem is the leverage point — these artifacts target exactly the policy, PD, and assessment-governance layer the findings identify
The governing principle
Dissemination is layered to match how this community actually consumes knowledge. A superintendent will read a two-page policy brief; a teacher will use an audit routine; a researcher will read the methods chapter. Same findings, four registers — and the participants hear them first.