Critical Theory
J J Ryoo and P McLaren, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
ã 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Glossary
Critical pedagogy – A teaching approach that
brings together critical theory and educational
practice in order to help students question and
challenge dominant beliefs and practices for higher
social, critical consciousness.
Dialectic – Initially conceptualized as a Socratic
technique of employing discussion, reasoning, and,
therefore, dialog to expose false beliefs, Hegel
applied the dialectic to mean a critical investigation of
the process of change resulting in the theoretical
application of such a process to the social sciences.
Domination – The exercise of ruling power with
supremacy or preeminence over another.
Exploitation – The act of making use of another in
an unfair or mean manner for one’s own advantage.
Inquiry – A systematic investigation and
examination of facts or principles.
Praxis – A union of action and reflection and of
theory and practice; critical praxis in education refers
to a threefold process of self-reflection, reflective
action, and collective reflective action for social
change.
Critical Theory: An Overview
Critical theory has a long history of informing and shaping
diverse qualitative research practices. Such a theoretical
lens – both for educational researchers and otherwise –
has proven particularly valuable in – first, challenging qual-
itative researchers to question more positivist approaches
that can inaccurately assume scientific neutrality among
objective observers while, second, engaging researchers in
more reflexive research practices that question the biases
from which they view the world. Through using critical
theory, qualitative researchers can push educational reform
for the better of all humanity.
Although it is difficult to point to one, universally
accepted critical theory that has been unproblematically
embraced by all critical philosophers, one could still rec-
ognize a shared notion of critical theory as referring to
both the legacy of Western theoretical traditions following
the Frankfurt School, as well as an evolving school of
thought and process of critique.
348
As a philosophy within the social sciences, critical the-
ory refers to the prolific work of several generations of
German thinkers belonging to Western European and
Marxist traditions who can be broadly categorized as mem-
bers of the Frankfurt School. Philosophers of the Frankfurt
School moved away from traditional theory by seeking to
radically reconstruct the meaning of human emancipation
through what Max Horkheimer has described as ‘‘liberat
[ing] human beings from the circumstances that enslave
them’’ (Horkheimer, 1972: 244). Critical theory is rooted in
historicizing, critiquing, and exposing the relationships of
domination and subordination as well as the contradictions
in which humankind is entrenched and thus, in essence, is a
liberatory philosophy. Such critique focuses on decon-
structing how knowledge is produced, whose knowledge
is valued, and how control of such knowledge equates to
power in society, with the purpose of preventing people
from becoming slaves to the ideas and activities that socie-
tal institutions push upon them. As a result of this search
for a theory that – through critique of social constructs –
could articulate freedom for all, while arguing against the
suppression of human consciousness, multiple and diverse
critical theories have developed since the birth of the
Frankfurt School, including (but not limited to): critical
race theory, critical pedagogy, critical literacy, critical fem-
inist theory, etc. (see the section titled Global Critical
Philosophies).
Viewed as a process of critique or methodology, critical
theory may also be defined as a type of self-conscious means
of addressing the need for dialog and a dialectic approach
around transformative, emancipatory practice. Such a pro-
cess of critique pushes theorists to continuously question
how they look at – and depict – the world in comparison to
how the world actually exists, and, as a result, challenges
theorists to question the very theories they form through
such a process. According to critical theory, when a philos-
ophy is embraced without question and fails to problema-
tize wider society, it has become an ideology in need of
critique. The Frankfurt School valued the use of such
inquiry or critique as a tool articulating praxis – therefore,
engaging a relationship between theory and society.
A Brief History of Critical Theory and the
Frankfurt School
The best way to understand critical theory is to first
locate it within Western philosophy’s historical trajectory.

In doing so, one will find that critical explorations of the
nature of knowledge production that form the framework
of critical theory today can be traced back as far as 2500
years before the first critical scholars.
Classical Philosophers
A critical approach to understanding the relationship
between knowledge and power in society can be found
in the work of the Greek philosophers Socrates (469–399
BCE), Plato (428/427–348/347 BCE), and Aristotle (384–
322 BCE). Through Plato’s dialogs – most notably Gorgias
and The Apology – one can see how Socrates (Plato’s
mentor) questioned the way the Sophists (classical
Greek philosophers who exercised great power in Athens)
used rhetoric to persuade people to manufacture and
believe in false truths, rather than use rhetoric to search
for ultimate truth for the better of humankind. Similarly,
Plato’s determination to record Socrates’ stories through
the written word – despite Socrates’ skepticism about the
technology of writing – reflects the ways in which Plato
recognized the importance of language as a meaning-
making tool for the development of critical thought. Fol-
lowing Plato, Aristotle theorized and deconstructed the
power of knowledge creation in language manipulation
through The Art of Rhetoric and Poetics. Aristotle outlines
the process of writing persuasive speeches that appeal to
logos (reason), pathos (emotion), and ethos (confidence in
the orator’s personal character). Although thousands of
years would pass between the lives of these Greek philo-
sophers and the foundations of critical theory which grew
out of the Enlightenment, the examination of linguistic
tools in knowledge production that explored in Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle’s work proved invaluable to Western
philosophy traditions.
Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Modern Foundations of
Critical Philosophy
Following the Middle Ages – that marked the hegemony
of the Catholic Church – and the Renaissance, that
marked the break from this Church’s control, came the
birth of the Enlightenment in Europe and America. Dur-
ing this era, Immanuel Kant (1721–1804) highlighted the
value of critique as the only way to find true knowledge
and combat illusory ideologies by separating the self from
the dogmas surrounding us and by questioning those
concepts that are presented to us as facts. Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) also theorized about knowl-
edge production but wished to push beyond Kant’s sepa-
ration of mind and self when deconstructing ideologies.
Hegel, instead, sought to historicize the process of arriv-
ing at truth. Hegel’s approach suggested that history could
be viewed as progress toward a greater humanity – and
Utopia – through a higher consciousness of self in and
Critical Theory 349
with the world. Hegel’s great contribution to the founda-
tions of critical theory exists in his use of dialectic
reasoning to reach perfection, which involves engaging
in dialog to overcome the contradictions between thesis
and antithesis toward a synthesis that would, in turn, be
challenged repeatedly until perfect synthesis (Utopia)
could be reached.
Following Hegel, Karl Marx’s (1818–83) work with
Friedrich Engels with regard to the historical and material
conditions of capitalism, is recognized as the most influ-
ential to shaping critical theory. Although seen, primarily,
as an economic philosopher, Marx’s elucidation of how
the proletariat (working class) has been alienated and
exploited by the bourgeoisie (ruling class) – who benefit
through the accumulation of wealth – helped develop an
understanding of how ideologies reinforce false con-
sciousness that can be used to maintain power in the
hands of those in control. Thus, Marx provided the basic
idea on which critical theory is constructed: those who
have economic power in society also control the cultural
superstructure of that society. Marx recognized how pro-
duction and consumption of media (through language)
controlled class consciousness and how, simultaneously,
such a tool could also be used against oppressive capitalist
ideologies for a better humanity.
The Frankfurt School
The original home of the Frankfurt School was in the
Institute for Social Research (Das Institut für Sozial-
forschung) that was originally founded in Frankfurt,
Germany, in February 1923, but was forced to move under
Nazi threat, in 1933. In 1930, the Institute came under
the directorship of Max Horkheimer and grew to include
critical theorists such as Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse,
Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin who shifted its
theoretical focus from an analysis of bourgeois society’s
socioeconomic substructures to bourgeois cultural super-
structures. Although primarily influenced by Marxism, the
Frankfurt School rejected an orthodox reading of Marx and
represented a different form of Marxism than their Bolshe-
vik contemporaries, as they did not envision an inevitable
proletariat revolution nor focus solely on economic produc-
tion. Instead, the Frankfurt School sought to understand the
relationship between theory and society through a dialecti-
cal framework that also examined the realm of culture
‘‘including not only the so-called spiritual contents of sci-
ence, art, and religion, but also law, ethics, fashion, public
opinion, sport, amusement, life style, etc.’’ (Horkheimer,
1972). Thus, the Frankfurt School became both a represen-
tation of Western Marxism and a critique of it.
Central to the Frankfurt School’s articulation of criti-
cal theory was its critique of the Enlightenment’s con-
ceptualization of instrumental reason, rationality, and
positivism (as explored by diverse thinkers including
350 Qualitative Research
Saint-Simon, Comte, the Vienna Circle, and others). The
Frankfurt School believed there was a breakdown in rea-
son due to a ‘‘crisis of science’’ that reduced the concept
of knowledge to a limited scientific methodology of
‘‘description, classification, and generalization of phe-
nomena, with no care to distinguish the unimportant
from the essential’’ that could only be resolved through
the creation of ‘‘a correct theory of the present social
situation’’ (Horkheimer, 1972). Echoing Nietzsche’s belief
that it was not science but the scientific method that
proved triumphant during the nineteenth century, the
Frankfurt School sought to rescue the world from the
basic assumptions of logical positivism – that valued
objective observation as the only way to produce truth –
by envisioning critical theory as an improved approach to
human reasoning, supporting a more self-conscious cri-
tique of human action for transformation. The Frankfurt
School believed that positivist rationality and its narrow
view of science endangered human ability to think criti-
cally and subjectively with regard to the world – freezing
human history behind selected, organized, and fetishized
facts in false-value neutrality, rather than recognizing how
natural reality and science relate both to human con-
sciousness and lack of consciousness as well as subjectivity
and objectivity positions. Furthermore, the Frankfurt
School articulated how those engaged in using positivist
rationality were not necessarily conscious of the ways in
which such an approach could maintain an oppressive
power imbalance or the status quo in work labeled as
scientific, and thus urged philosophers to consider their
positionality as producers of knowledge.
In order to address these problems with logical positiv-
ity and Enlightenment rationality, the Frankfurt School
formulated a critical theory that first recognized the rela-
tionship between individuals and society as a whole. In this
way, critical theory develops a capacity for meta-theory
by acknowledging the cultural–historical positionality of
interested, non-neutral parties whose political or social
interests affect how they navigate and present knowledge
or information. With such a self-critical and self-conscious
lens, critical theory engages in dialectical thought that lives
within the tension between critique and theoretical recon-
struction. As noted by Marcuse (1960), ‘‘Dialectical thought
starts with the experience that the world is unfree; that is to
say, man and nature exist in conditions of alienation, exist
as ‘other than they are.’ . . . Thought ‘corresponds’ to reality
only as it transforms reality by comprehending its contra-
dictory structure.’’ Dialectical methodologies synthesize
philosophy, the social sciences, and radical politics to help
illustrate how society, state, economy, culture, and the
individual are all related to one another. Thus, critical
theory should work towards an improved society devoid
of injustice and oppression and ‘‘emancipation from slav-
ery’’ (Horkheimer, 1972) through equal engagement of
theory and practice in critical praxis.
The Frankfurt School also used critical theory to reject
essentializing and hierarchical perspectives of culture that
were supported by sociologists and orthodox Marxists of
the time. The Frankfurt School rejected definitions of
culture as a stagnant, objectified ideology, and, instead,
embraced culture’s processual and politically and eco-
nomically situated role in the development of human
relationships over time. Such was visible in the work of
Horkheimer and Adorno.
More specifically, Theodor Adorno (1903–69) power-
fully shaped the future of cultural theory through his
work in the Frankfurt School by recognizing how major
culture industries used popular culture – such as film and
radio – to advance the oppressive ideologies of the domi-
nant, capitalist society. Through Adorno’s work, critical
theory grew to question the dehumanizing relationship
between media culture and its consumers, while simulta-
neously recognizing the power of using new media lite-
racies against such control. In One Dimensional Man
(Marcuse, 1964), Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) critiques
industrialism’s oppression of individuals for the main-
tenance of systems of production. Through this work,
Marcuse pushed critical theory to demonstrate how indi-
viduals are completely controlled by a system of produc-
tion and consumption. In other work, Marcuse also helps
to elucidate the purpose of dialectical thought as a con-
nection between thought and action in Reason and Revolu-
tion (Marcuse, 1960), where he writes how ‘‘Thought
‘corresponds’ to reality only as it transforms reality by
comprehending its contradictory structure . . . to break
down the self-assurance and self-contentment of common
sense, to undermine the sinister confidence in the power
and language of facts.’’ Max Horkheimer’s (1895–1973)
work focused primarily on the function of reason within
philosophy and the creation of oppressive ideologies
in larger society which proved particularly significant
during a period in which the Nazis were using evil and
dehumanizing methods to manipulate society to engage
in the mass murder and torture of Jewish people.
Horkheimer used critical theory as a tool to fight such
destructive mass ideologies in a rapidly changing world.
Habermas’ contributed to critical theory in his develop-
ment of the theory of communicative reason or commu-
nicative rationality couched in discourse ethics and idea
exchange. Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) engaged in cri-
tiques of literary and artistic work – building on aesthetic
theory while pushing critical theory to discuss the realm
of culture and its historical context. Thus, critical theory
was created to give people the agency to challenge taken-
for-granted assumptions through tools such as dialectical
reasoning and praxis that promote free-thinking and self-
determination for all individuals in society. As elucidated
by Horkheimer, a truly critical theory ‘‘has as its object
human beings as producers of their own historical form of
life’’ (Horkheimer, 1993: 21).

Global Critical Philosophies
Although critical theory itself was born of a Western and
European philosophical history, other great philosophies
have also developed worldwide that should be recognized
as part of the critical theory canon in its current, living
form. Some such traditions have borrowed from Western
philosophies while others have developed more indepen-
dently and, while not all such work has been unearthed
due to language barriers and imbalanced power relation-
ships between Western imperialists and scholars of other
nations, an attempt will be made here to bring some of
these global critical philosophies to the mainstream of
Eurocentric critical thought.
Within the African American tradition, one can see
important developments in critical theory through the
work of W.E.B. DuBois (1868–1963) in his famous work –
The Souls of Black Folk (originally published in 1903, DuBois,
1903). Through his deep exploration of race in America,
DuBois theorizes about ‘‘double consciousness’’ experi-
enced in the African American who sees herself/himself
through the gaze of those who hate people of color, and
describes the torment this places on the spirits of all people
in a racist society. DuBois recognizes how ideologies of race
are formed through dominant languages, but how a critical
approach to education could help transcend such oppres-
sive ideologies for social change. Following the Harlem
Renaissance and the growth of amazing art and literary
works that helped engage humanity in a critique of America’s
social structures and institutions, Carter G. Woodson
(1875–1950) published The Miseducation of the Negro
(Woodson, 1933) which challenged the ways classical
education incorporated forms of scientific racism by
revising world histories to enforce ideas about the racial
inferiority of people of color. By removing African Americans
and African peoples from school knowledge with regard
to history and science, classical education dehumanized
African Americans and continued to oppress and mold
them to the racist, hierarchical American fabric. Woodson
calls for a critical education in which people of color could
question the schooling they receive for individual and
community liberation. Such works not only influenced
innumerable educators, scholars, artists, and activists toward
a critique of society for the purpose of social change as
is visible in the work of Frederick Douglass, Langston
Hughes, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther
Movement – all of who engaged in challenging how
knowledge is produced and used to manipulate truth in
a racially hierarchical society.
During the 1980s, other great scholars – such as
Edward Said and Homi Bhabha – pushed critical theorists
to think in new ways by developing studies in colonialism
and postcolonialism. Recognizing how Western colonial-
ism maintained its hegemony through the control of
knowledge and knowledge production, postcolonial
Critical Theory 351
theorists engage critical theory in ways most applicable to
the current reality of globalization. Although often asso-
ciated with postmodern theory in its methodology under
the influence of Jacques Derrida’s concepts of deconstruc-
tion, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and Michel Foucault’s
discourse analysis, postcolonial theory still relates to criti-
cal theory in the ways that colonized, indigenous peoples
have found agency in critiquing the oppressive societies in
which they live. In Orientalism (Said, 1978), Said critiques
the ways in which the West continues to romanticize Asian
and Middle Eastern nations as the archaic and unchanging
‘other’, while using such false ideologies to justify continued
imperialism throughout the Orient. Similarly, in Nation
and Narration (Bhabha, 1990), Bhabha problematizes how
postcolonial countries continue to be treated as one, homo-
geneous group by their ex-colonizers, with concepts of
nationhood narrativized through power imbalances between
ex-colonizing nations and their ex-colonial states.
Frantz Fanon (1925–61) made immeasurable contribu-
tion to the furthering of critical theories through his own
work in Africa focusing on Algerian resistance to French
rule. Believed to be influenced by the 1930s Négritude
movement – that rejected French colonial racism and was
led by Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Guianan Léon
Damas, and future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar
Senghor – Fanon explored how the psychology of oppres-
sion and the impact of colonialism affected the mental
health of colonized people in works like A Dying Colonial-
ism (Fanon, 1959) or Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon, 1967).
By critiquing the way colonial powers control colonial
ideology production and dissemination and how media
is used to manipulate colonized people into believing in
Western racial hierarchies of language, custom, or skin
color, Fanon illustrates how indigenous peoples can
deconstruct dominant language and texts toward ideology
change for liberation. Fanon’s work highly influenced the
revolutionaries of other nations – most notably Fidel
Castro in Cuba, Paulo Freire in Brazil, and the Black
Panthers in the United States.
Of course, Latin American and Central American devel-
opment of new critical theories can be traced through the
work of Liberation Theology that united indigenous people
with Catholic clergy against the oppressive, racist structures
of the European Catholic church, or in the work of Ernesto
Ché Guevara – Minister of Education in post-revolution
Cuba and organizer of the guerrilla mountain schools – but
the most notable development of critical theory can be
found in the work of Paulo Freire (1921–97), in Brazil.
Freire’s most famous work – The Pedagogy of the Oppressed –
explores the ways the educational system proves central to
the dehumanizing processes of capitalist and neocolonial
societies through banking education that treats students as
empty vessels that passively collect the oppressive norms
and knowledge of teachers. Freire focused on literacy and
literacy education while teaching illiterate adults how to
352 Qualitative Research
interrogate and deconstruct dominant texts within a racist,
classist Brazil. Freire believed in the power of praxis and
dialog to push critical thought against oppressive forces that
control schooling structures.
While critical theory has surely influenced revolution-
aries, scholars, and activists throughout East Asia, the
continued imbalance of power relationships that maintain
hierarchies with regard to race, class, color, and language
in the Western world continues to negate and oppress East
Asian critical scholarship. Little of East Asian critical
theory has been translated and shared with Western aca-
demia and this issue should be immediately addressed.
Critical Theory in Education
The critical theory of the Frankfurt School and other
global critical theories prove crucial to educational
reform and can be used to revolutionize today’s schools
toward a more just, humanizing, and democratic system.
First of all, the ways in which critical theory challenges
positivist rationality that assumes political neutrality in
educational spaces is invaluable to opening a space for
educators to recognize the hidden curricula of current
standardized schooling. Second, critical theory values
historical consciousness as fundamental to engaging in
critical thought and critical literacy. Recognizing the
sociohistorical framework in which knowledge is pro-
duced and the pedagogical tools used by teachers in
today’s schools proves essential not only to deconstructing
what students are learning, but also how students are
learning. Third, engaging in historical consciousness
through critical theory in education simultaneously forces
us to re-mediate the ways in which educators and admin-
istrators of schools view race, class, gender, language,
sexuality, and culture. Critical theory perspectives allow
for people to engage in an informed critique toward
reforming education so that it treats each student with
respect toward the funds of knowledge and perspectives
from which she/he comes without essentializing or reify-
ing her/his experiences. Fourth, critical theory can be
usefully applied to education through the use of dialecti-
cal thought and praxis which pushes teachers and students
alike to actively use social inquiry to question oppressive,
dominant structures in society while moving toward a
more liberatory practice. Fifth, critical theory in educa-
tion believes in the power of schooling as a tool for social
justice by engaging in the needs of students’ home com-
munities. Thus, using critical theory not only as a means
of meaning-making, but also as a means of connecting
diverse students and teachers to each other in shared
practices through education can build a new community
of learners who can change the world. As recognized by
Freire and Macedo (1987), critical theory can be engaged
in education through critical praxis that involves ‘‘reading
the world . . . through reading the word’’ (p. 35) as stu-
dents gain new critical literacies by being taught to engage
in questioning social relations existent in society.
Following this critical theory tradition, developers of
critical pedagogy – including, but not limited to, Paulo
Freire, Peter McLaren, Ernest Morrell, Henry Giroux,
Ira Shor, Antonia Darder, bell hooks, Joe Kincheloe,
Paula Allman, Donald Macedo, and Maxine Greene –
encourage educators to apply the ideas of critical theory
to schooling structures in ways that revolutionize the ways
we think about both the purpose and practices of educa-
tion. Although diverse in its applications to schooling,
critical pedagogy challenges the conservative policies
and practices of banking education that – in the current
era – are tied to standardized testing and curricula in a
classist, racist, sexist, and heterosexist world. By embrac-
ing the power of student, educator, and researcher agency
within an oppressive American school system, critical
pedagogy grounds social justice education using tools of
critique that question how knowledge is produced, con-
trolled, and disseminated. Critical pedagogy proves a
valuable example of how critical theory can be applied
to education. Critical revolutionary pedagogy (see the
work of Peter McLaren, Paula Allman, Glenn Rikowski,
Mike Cole, and Dave Hill) has also been developed in
opposition to more domesticated and sanitized versions of
critical pedagogy and critical theory found in educational
reform efforts that do not contest neoliberal capitalism,
and attempts to unite critical pedagogy and classical
Marxist theory.
Critical theory pushes educators and educational
researchers to rethink the power dynamics that both influ-
ence and work within schooling systems and, as explored
by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) – who believed that all
humans were capable of intellectual and rational faculties –
critical theory can help us recognize the ways in which
education, similar to media, is an ideological apparatus of
the state that reproduces the hegemony of those in control.
Thus, educational researchers can find agency through
critical theory to engage in social inquiry that transforms
the space of schools, the practice of teachers, the treatment
of students, the sharing of diverse knowledge, and the
improvement of society at large.
See also: Critical Ethnography; Critical Race Theory;
Discourse Analysis; Hermeneutics.
Bibliography
Bhabha, H. (ed.) (1990). Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge.
DuBois, W. E. B. (1903/1982). The Souls of Black Folk. New York:
Signet.
Fanon, F. (1959). A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove Press.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.

Freire, P. and Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the Word and the
World. New York: Continuum.
Horkheimer, M. (1972). Critical Theory. New York: Seabury Press.
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Cambridge: MIT Press.
Marcuse, H. (1960). Reason and Revolution. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1964). One Dimensional Man. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Woodson, C. G. (1933/1990). The Miseducation of the Negro.
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Further Reading
Adorno, T. (1987). Negative Dialectic. New York: Continuum.
Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. (1992). Reproduction in Education,
Society and Culture. London: Sage.
Darder, A., Baltodano, M., and Torres, R. D. (eds.) (2003). The Critical
Pedagogy Reader. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Dubiel, H. (1985). Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of
Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, anniversary edn.
New York: Continuum.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings. New York: Pantheon.
Giroux, H. (1983). Theory and Resistance in Education. South Hadley,
MA: Bergin and Garvey.
Green, M. (1988). The Dialectics of Freedom. New York: Teachers
College.
Critical Theory 353
Held, D. (1980). Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to
Habermas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Horkheimer, M. (1972). Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New York:
Herder.
Kellner, D. (1989). Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity. Baltimore,
MD: Polity and John Hopkins University Press.
Marcuse, H. (1966). One Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon.
Marx, K. (1969). Early Writings. New York: McGraw-Hill.
McLaren, P. and Giarelli, J. (1995). Critical Theory and Educational
Research. New York: SUNY Press.
Morrell, E. (2008). Critical Literacy and Urban Youth: Pedagogies of
access, dissent, and liberation. New York: Routledge.
Rasmussen, D. (ed.) (1996). The Handbook of Critical Theory. Oxford:
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Ryder, M. (2009). Contemporary Philosophy, Critical Theory and
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Sim, S. and Van Loon, B. (2001). Introducing Critical Theory. Royston,
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Wiggershaus, R. (1994). The Frankfurt School. Cambridge, UK: Polity
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Relevant Websites
http://www.humanities.uci.edu – Critical Theory Institute, University of
California, Irvine.
http://www.uta.edu – Illuminations, The University of Texas at Arlington.
http://www.marxists.org – Marxists Internet Archive.