1. CRITICAL EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
© LOUIS COHEN, LAWRENCE MANION AND KEITH MORRISON

2. 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

3. CRITICAL THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Ideology critique
Feminist research
Participatory research
Participatory action research
Critical ethnography
Post-colonial theory
Critical race theory
Political research
Queer theory
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors

4. COMMON THEMES IN CRITICAL APPROACHES (MACRO AND MICRO)
Equality
Power
Freedom
Democracy
Emancipation
Social justice
Interests
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors

5. HABERMAS’S KNOWLEDGE-CONSTITUTIVE INTERESTS
TECHNICAL INTEREST
Prediction
& Control
HERMENEUTIC/ PRACTICAL INTEREST
Understanding &
Interpretation
EMANCIPATORY INTEREST
Emancipation
& Freedom
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors

6. IDEOLOGY CRITIQUE
Describe existing situation
Understand reasons for/causes of existing situation
Interrogate legitimacy of the reasons and causes of, and interests at work in, the existing situation
Set an agenda to improve the situation
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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 of identities in a post-colonial world.
© 2018 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison; individual chapters, the contributors

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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