Self‐reflection and resilience in educational research

This article revisits the critical realist ethnographic process that was adopted in my doctoral thesis, which was concerned with the experiences of ethnic identity of white British and Pakistani British children as they started kindergarten in the northwest of England. The article focuses on the ethnography that emerged from the visits that I carried out alongside staff to children's homes before they started kindergarten and on the way in which these were portrayed and analysed in the final thesis. I conclude that the process of observation, writing field notes and then producing a fuller ethnography produced a very partial representation of the empirical world. This was problematic in that, in critical realism, what is observed in the world of the ‘empirical’ and considered in the world of the ‘actual’ forms the basis for understanding the underlying causal tendencies which point to the underlying explanatory concepts in the world of the ‘real’. I argue, however, that more careful critical realist ethnography has the potential to be a powerful methodological framework which accepts the contested nature of reality but which, unlike postmodernism, provides a means of addressing possibilities and of moving beyond ‘undecidability’.     

A social realist perspective on student learning in higher education: the morphogenesis of agency

Contemporary critiques of student learning research call for new theoretical and methodological approaches. This article proposes a social realist approach to this research, using the morphogenetic theory of sociologist Margaret Archer. The applicability of this approach is demonstrated by reference to an empirical study of engineering students at a South African university, using narrative analysis. In the article itself, two narratives are given in some detail, illustrating the key outlines of the analysis. Students’ emerging personal identities are shown to be highly dependent on their social backgrounds, yet when in the university the possibilities for the morphogenesis of student agency are very constrained. A critical interrogation of these findings proposes that a true higher education should facilitate the development of an enlarged sense of agency for students.     

To what extent do discipline,knowledge domain and curriculum affect the feasibility of the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) in higher education?

What is the role of knowledge in the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) in Higher Education? This paper presents the findings of empirical research at a Canadian university. A position of knowledge differentiation located in a social realist sociology of knowledge is adopted. This is not an obvious or usual position for scholars of RPL, because it holds that what distinguishes formal academic knowledge from experiential knowledge is a question of the structure and purpose of the knowledge. Research into a range of academic and professional education programmes points to degrees of – and different types of – possible connection between formal and experiential knowledge. Findings offer an indication of the type of programmes in relation to which the implementation of RPL is likely to be most feasible. Additionally, findings show how social factors other than knowledge types enable or constrain the implementation of RPL. Avenues for further research are suggested.     

Critical realism and school effectiveness research in Colombia: the difference it should make

This article draws on the case of academic work produced by Colombian scholars, to address the debate on the persistent failure of policy efforts to improve school effectiveness. Realist meta-theory plays a significant role in this research, because it provides a general framework to identify ontological problems and inconsistencies in empirical and theoretical positions informing policy debates in the country. The analysis focuses on the contributions and weaknesses of empiricism, structuralism and post-structuralism in the work of Colombian scholars, and concludes by arguing for the need to deploy research methodologies that study stratified emergent social processes behind observable educational outcomes.     

Emergent interactions: rethinking the relationship between teaching and learning

The relationship between teaching and learning is represented in contemporary higher education research which has looked at the correlations between students’ approaches to learning and teachers’ approaches to teaching. This article proposes a rethinking of this relationship, building on a critical realist perspective. Here, the teaching–learning interaction is argued to be emergent from the activities of teaching and of learning, and it is this emergent property which provides the explanatory mechanism for the relationship between them. Support for this position is located in recent work by Paul Ashwin and also in the sociology of Margaret Archer.     

‘We don't believe media anymore’: Mapping critical literacies in an adult immigrant language classroom

This article maps critical literacies conceptually and empirically in the context of adult immigrant language classrooms. It begins by describing Deleuze and Guattari's cartographic approach. Then it traces critical literacies situated conceptually within a Freirean paradigm before mapping them differently through the Deleuzian-informed Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT). MLT frames critical literacies as reading intensively, that is, disruptively. This alternative conceptualization is then mobilized empirically in relation to the problems and politics produced in the qualitative study of one language classroom. In this classroom, reading a newspaper article provoked a series of transformative events or becomings, a concept created by Deleuze and Guattari and which is central to MLT. A research cartography is presented as a series of vignettes weaving data and concepts. This empirical mapping of media literacies and reading intensively offers insights into the politics of becoming in adult immigrant language classrooms and opens conceptual lines of flight between critical literacies and reading intensively.     

Evidence‐based practice in educational research: a critical realist critique of systematic review

The paper argues that a critical realist perspective can contribute to a critique of evidence‐based practice, while at the same time not abandoning the idea of evidence altogether. The paper is structured around a number of related themes: the sociopolitics of ‘evidence‐based’; epistemological roots and a critical realist critique; the debate in action based on the recent systematic review of personal development planning; and theory to practice gaps. The advocacy of evidence‐based practice is currently being used to undermine professional autonomy and to valorise the ‘gold‐standard’ of randomised controlled trials. However, the paper proposes that evidence can properly be claimed for critique and emancipatory projects, and that its current discursive location at the core of New Labour thinking is not the only one available. Moreover, thinking from a critical realist perspective liberates the space for theoretically informed work, whereby arguments about method, and in particular randomised controlled trials, do not become a proxy for the open examination of ontological and epistemological assumptions. One of the underlying themes in critical realism is that of critique and emancipation, and evidence properly understood aligned to clear theoretical argumentation is part of this project. Existing models of systematic review fall far short of this aspiration and are of little help to practitioners. As researchers and practitioners we have every reason to maintain a critical stance towards the way evidence is being deployed in debates about policy and practice.     

Critical religious education: highlighting religious truth-claims in non-confessional educational contexts

In this article, a religious education, which combines a respect for relevant critical demands, when analysing religious truth-claims, and a sensitivity to the need to avoid unwarranted criteriological constraints in the analysing process, is examined. Starting with an analytical comment upon Andrew Wright’s critical realist approach in terms of a ‘pursuit of truth’, the question of how to motivate epistemological analyses within religious education is raised and discussed with reference to three relevant sceptical arguments. These arguments are made objects of critical comments, and an illustration of pedagogical and methodological consequences is presented with reference to the new syllabuses for religious education in Sweden. Finally, a constructive re-interpretation of Wright’s approach is elaborated, and a critical position in relation to it is outlined.     

Boudon,Realism, and the Cognitive Habitus: Why an Explanation of Inequality / Difference Cannot be Limited to a Model of Secondary Effects

Boudon has distinguished between the primary and secondary effects of socialization as a cause of social disparities in education. His explanation of secondary effects, which rests on an analysis of decision-making within opportunity cost constraints, has attracted support from realist sociologists. The empirical evidence, however, suggests that primary effects, largely the result of cognitive socialization in early childhood, may be a more important source of variance than Boudon recognizes. Some implications of this for a general theory of inequality/difference are examined with reference to the character of social explanation and in the context of the realist discussion on the structure-agency problem.     

Teaching Poor Ethnic Minority Students: A Critical Realist Interpretation of Disempowerment

This article aims to supplement the literature on the role of school context with regards to the disempowerment of teachers in their work with poor ethnic minority students. We use a critical realist framework to analyse the empirical data collected for an in-depth school case study and we suggest the existence of real, interrelated, emergent and localised disempowering contextual factors.     

Economic,social and embodied cultural capitals as shapers and predictors of boys' educational aspirations

The author presents the result of a quantitative survey as a part of a larger mixed-methods study conducted across two case study schools in urban Jamaica. It focuses on Black Caribbean boys' levels of educational aspirations in relation to their economic, social, and embodied cultural capital. The study utilizes Bourdieu's notions of capital, reconceptualized to match the sociocultural context of the research and set within a critical realist metatheoretical framework. Logistic regression models, supported by participants' narratives, show boys' educational aspirations to be highly predictable by their level of capital—including dispositional beliefs held through influence of the maternal family both locally and in the Jamaican diaspora of the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada.     

A Religious Education Otherwise? An Examination and Proposed Interruption of Current British Practice

This paper examines the recent shift towards the dominance of the study of philosophy of religion, ethics and critical thinking within religious education in Britain. It explores the impact of the critical realist model, advocated by Andrew Wright and Philip Barnes, in response to prior models of phenomenological religious education, in order to expose the ways in which both approaches can lead to a distorted understanding of the nature of religion. Although the writing of Emmanuel Levinas has been used in support of the critical realist model by Wright, I will consider how his and Slavoj Žižek's writings on the nature of religion might challenge the dominance of the critical realist approach and provide a conceptual framework through which it might be possible to develop an alternative approach to religious education that attends to the complexity, ambiguity and demanding nature of engaging with religious traditions.     

新建本科院校人文社会科学研究方法的转型

新建本科院校要注重内涵发展,就必然要提升人文社科研究层次。提升的路径就是研究方式的转型——在思辨研究的基础上进行实证研究。参照自然科学和社会科学发展的路径,人文社科研究发展的路径要在思辨、规范性的基础上进行实证研究,对人文社科研究要采取多元方式方法,如要形成从上到下的合力保障,严密的制度,实验室等,     

What Are We Looking For?—Pro Critical Realism in Text Interpretation

A visible role in the theoretical discourses on education has been played in the last couple of decades by the constructivist epistemologies, which have questioned the basic assumptions of realist epistemologies. The increased popularity of interpretative approaches especially has put the realist epistemologies on the defensive. Basing itself on critical realism, this article discusses the ontological and epistemological commitments of educational research and its consequences for text interpretation. The article defends ontological realism and the semantic conception of truth against radical constructivist ontology and the epistemic conceptions of truth.     

Deconstruction, Anti–Realism and Philosophy of Science—an interview with Christopher Norris

In this interview, Christopher Norris discusses a wide range of issues having to do with postmodernism, deconstruction and other controversial topics of debate within present–day philosophy and critical theory. More specifically he challenges the view of deconstruction as just another offshoot of the broader postmodernist trend in cultural studies and the social sciences. Norris puts the case for deconstruction as continuing the ‘unfinished project of modernity’ and—in particular—for Derrida’s work as sustaining the values of enlightened critical reason in various spheres of thought from epistemology to ethics, sociology and politics. Along the way he addresses a number of questions that have lately been raised with particular urgency for teachers and educationalists, among them the revival of creationist doctrine and the idea of scientific knowledge as a social, cultural, or discursive construct. In this context he addresses the ‘science wars’ or the debate between those who uphold the values of scientific reason, progress and truth, and those (like the ‘strong’ sociologists of knowledge) who would reject such values as merely the expression of a dominant ideological consensus. Norris also discusses the emergence of anti–realism as a strongly marked trend within recent analytic philosophy, one that denies the existence of objective (‘recognition–transcendent’) truths in mathematics, the physical sciences, history and other disciplines. Thus statements are thought of as possessing a truth–value just insofar as we possess some adequate proof–procedure or some means of finding them out through empirical or other methods of enquiry. Norris offers a range of arguments against this anti–realist position and brings out its convergence with various postmodernist lines of thought. Through a running commentary on Derrida’s work in relation to these developments he shows how deconstruction has been misconstrued by sociologists, cultural critics and educational theorists whose understanding has often been based on a limited acquaintance with the primary texts. Above all Norris calls for a renewed engagement with the philosophic discourse of modernity and a willingness to challenge postmodern scepticism and value–relativism in a spirit of open–minded critical debate.     

对国内英语自主学习研究现状的思考——对国内外语类主要期刊十年(1996-2005)的统计分析

对过去10年中（1996—2005）刊登在国内外语类主要期刊上有关英语自主学习研究的文章进行检索统计，通过对研究现状的分析发现，目前研究中存在着内容重复、实证性研究比例偏低、对学习主体研究相对薄弱等问题。预测未来自主学习研究将呈现如下趋势：研究范围更加广泛、多种研究方法结合并用、研究对象以学习者为主体、计算机软件和网络等手段将用于自主学习能力的培养。     

Head teachers’ spirituality and inclusive education: a perspective from critical realism

ABSTRACT

Spiritual leadership gains attention amongst researchers for closing the gap between achieving personal and organisational goals. Despite documentations that spirituality undergirds head teacher’s actions leading inclusive schools, research still remains thin in understanding how spirituality underpins leadership for inclusive education. This paper draws on the philosophy of critical realism to offer a conceptual tool that identifies head teachers’ spiritual actions in their efforts to include ethnic minority students. This is done through multiple qualitative methods collection from an in-depth case study at a multicultural primary school in Cyprus. The critical realist framework helps uncover head teacher’s spiritual actions in a more systematic, structured and holistic way. It reveals that head teachers’ spirituality supports the goals of inclusion and occurs in at least four interrelated and emergent ontological levels (psychological, social, cultural and policy levels) which are set in four scaler levels from microscopic to macroscopic (sub-individual, micro, meso and macro levels). This framework problematises mono-dimensional and reductionist understandings of spirituality in leadership. The paper concludes by suggesting solutions to enrich leadership programmes for inclusive education with fostering leaders’ spirituality at different ontological levels.     

Explanatory accounts in international and comparative higher education research

Developing plausible explanations rooted in theory and supported by evidence is a challenge for comparative higher education studies. The purpose of this article is to consider how comparative studies in higher education might develop accounts that allow the research community to enhance explanatory power. Higher education studies can advance explanations about what is happening and why, as well as interpret the meaning of occurrences by drawing broadly on realist scholarly traditions. Rather than prioritising a methodology, the field should prioritise essential questions and address them with all appropriate empirical tools. Avenues for explanatory research include bounded case studies, multi‐method investigations into specific phenomena, mechanism‐based approaches and macro‐social analysis.     

Scientists’ Ontological and Epistemological Views about Science from the Perspective of Critical Realism

Including the perspectives of scientists about the nature and process of science is important for an authentic and nuanced portrayal of science in science education. The small number of studies that have explored scientists’ worldviews about science has thus far generated contradictory findings, with recent studies claiming that scientists simultaneously hold contradictory sophisticated and naïve views. This article reports on an exploratory study that uses the framework of Bhaskar’s critical realism to elicit and separately analyse academic scientists’ ontological and epistemological views about science in semi-structured interviews. When the views of scientists are analysed through the lens of critical realism, it is clear that it is possible to hold a realist ontological commitment about what knowledge is of, simultaneously with a fallibilist epistemological commitment about knowledge itself. The apparent incongruence of scientists’ so-called naïve and sophisticated views about science is resolved when analysed using a critical realist framework. Critical realism offers a simple and coherent framework for science educators that avoids many of the problems of positivism and social constructivism by finding a middle ground between them. The three pillars of critical realism: ontological realism, epistemological fallibilism and judgmental rationality help to make sense of how socially constructed scientific knowledge can be anchored in an independent reality.