Commentary on “Constructing New Theory for Identifying Students with Emotional Disturbance”

First we would like to commend and thank Dr. Dori Barnett for her willingness to submit her work for the purpose of acting as a constructivist grounded theory research exemplar, with the understanding that she was subjecting her work to the scrutiny of researchers from another grounded theory tradition. We have developed this commentary on Dr. Barnett’s work in the spirit of respect and colleagueship that was recommended in the guest editorial of this Grounded Theory Review issue. We acknowledge that her study is very significant and will be very useful to practitioners. Our purpose is to use the research exemplar to identify differences between this type of research and that of classic grounded theory.Readers who have been schooled and grounded in classic grounded theory methodology will have noticed at least five major differences between the constructivist grounded theory exemplar and classic grounded theory. This commentary will delineate and describe these differences.