CRITICAL EDUCATIONAL

RESEARCH

© LOUIS COHEN, LAWRENCE MANION AND

KEITH MORRISON
 STRUCTURE OF THE CHAPTER
• Critical theory and critical educational research
• Ideology critique
• Criticisms of approaches from critical theory
• Participatory research and critical theory
• Feminist research
• Post-colonial theory and queer theory

© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
CRITICAL THEORETICAL APPROACHES

© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
 COMMON THEMES IN CRITICAL
APPROACHES (MACRO AND MICRO)

© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
HABERMAS’S KNOWLEDGE-CONSTITUTIVE
INTERESTS

TECHNICAL Prediction
INTEREST & Control

HERMENEUTIC/ Understanding &

PRACTICAL Interpretation
INTEREST

EMANCIPATORY Emancipation
INTEREST & Freedom
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
 IDEOLOGY CRITIQUE

© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
 CRITIQUES OF CRITICAL THEORY
• Critical theory and ideology critique might not be
empowering or promote equality, freedom, democracy,
emancipation.
• Habermas’s knowledge-constitutive interests are artificially
separated.
• The link between ideology critique and emancipation is
neither clear nor proven, nor a logical necessity.
• The rationalistic appeal of ideology critique actually
obstructs action designed to bring about emancipation.
• Critical theory has a deliberate political agenda, but the
task of the researcher is not to be an ideologue or to have
an agenda, but to be dispassionate, disinterested and
objective.

© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
 FEMINIST RESEARCH
• The asymmetry of gender relations and
representation must be studied reflexively;
• Women’s issues, their history, biography and biology,
feature as a substantive agenda/focus in research;
• Raising of consciousness of oppression, exploitation,
empowerment, equality, voice and representation;
• Challenge the acceptability and notion of objectivity
and objective research;
• Substantive, value-laden dimensions and purposes of
feminist research are paramount;
• Research must empower women;
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
 FEMINIST RESEARCH
• Research need not only be undertaken by academic
experts;
• Women must collectivize their own individual histories if
they are to appropriate these histories for
emancipation;
• Commitment to revealing core processes and recurring
features of women’s oppression;
• Insistence on the inseparability of theory and practice;
• Insistence on the connections between the private and
the public, between the domestic and the political;
• Concern with the construction and reproduction of
gender and sexual difference;
• Rejection of narrow disciplinary boundaries;
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
 FEMINIST RESEARCH
• Rejection of the artificial subject/researcher dualism;
• Rejection of positivism and objectivity as male
mythology;
• Increased use of qualitative, introspective biographical
research techniques;
• Recognition of the gendered nature of social research
and the development of anti-sexist research
strategies;
• The research process as consciousness and awareness
raising and as fundamentally participatory;
• Primacy of women’s personal subjective experience;
• Rejection of hierarchies in social research;
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
 FEMINIST RESEARCH
• The vertical, hierarchical relationships of researchers/
research community and research objects, in which the
research itself is an instrument of domination and the
reproduction and legitimation of power elites, must be
replaced by research that promotes the interests of
dominated, oppressed, exploited groups;
• Recognition of equal status and reciprocal relationships
between subjects and researchers;
• Need to change the status quo, not just to understand or
interpret it;
• Research as a process of conscientization, to empower
oppressed participants.
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
 POST-COLONIAL THEORY
• After-effects, or continuation, of ideologies and
discourses of imperialism, domination and repression,
value systems (e.g. the domination of western values
and the delegitimization of non-western values);
• After-effects of colonialism on the daily lived
experiences of participants;
• Regard in which peoples in post-colonial societies are
held;
• Valorization of multiple voices and heterogeneity in
post-colonial societies;
• Resistance to marginalization of groups within post-
colonial societies;
• Construction
© 2018 Louis Cohen,of identities
Lawrence inMorrison;
Manion and Keith a post-colonial world.
individual chapters, the contributors
 QUEER THEORY
Queer theory explores the social construction and
privileging or denial of identities, sexual behaviour, deviant
behaviour and the categorizations and ideologies involved
in such constructions.
Halperin (1997, p. 62): Queer theory ‘acquires its meaning
from its oppositional relation to the norm. Queer is by
definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the
legitimate, the dominant’.
Queer theory explores, problematizes, interrogates
gender, sexuality and also their mediation by other
characteristics or forms of oppression, e.g. social class,
ethnicity, colour, disability.
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
VALUE-NEUTRALITY IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
• Should educational researchers be objective, value-neutral, non-
partisan, unbiased and strictly disinterested, providing a service
in bringing forward factual evidence, data and explanations on
such-and-such a matter, or is it acceptable for them to declare
their values, biases and interests and then proceed from there,
acting on those commitments?
• Should researchers be partisan or non-partisan, ‘committed’ or
‘disinterested’?
• Is the job of researchers only to provide evidence and
explanation, or does it extend into promoting political agendas?
• Should researchers press their own (political) agendas, values
and views?

© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors
VALUE-NEUTRALITY IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
• Should research concern itself only with the pursuit and production of
facts and knowledge and not play politics (recognizing that this does
not preclude value-relevant research, i.e. topics that may be of
concern to certain parties)?
• If politics and research are not the same, it is legitimate/ illegitimate
for the researcher to let a political agenda enter into – to bias – the
conduct of, and conclusions from, research?
• By not addressing consequences and implications, researchers allow
the status quo of inequality, social injustice and oppression to be
perpetuated, so it is incumbent on researchers not to hide behind
putative value-neutrality, since, in effect, such research is not value-
neutral but reinforces the dominant ideology and the interests of the
powerful.

© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors