Against the backdrop of teaching being downplayed in higher education, this study unravels how the university faculty members' implementation of teaching excellence is influenced by the interplay of objective structural conditionings and subjective internal deliberations, drawing upon Margaret Archer's social realist framework and her distinction…

This paper describes how critical realism was operationalized to provide an explanatory framework for a small-scale qualitative study in the field of teacher education in a sub-Saharan African context. Critical realism combines a realist ontology (there is something to find out about) with a relativistic epistemology (different people will come to…

Against the backdrop of prevalent student attrition in engineering education, this study draws upon Margaret Archer's social realistic theory and offers a close-up analysis of how structural and cultural factors interplay to affect Chinese university engineering faculty members' perceptions of and agency in practicing 'scholarly teaching'.…

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…

Much of the research in educational technology with a primary concern over how technology enhances learning has been criticized as privileging the immediate learning settings over the other dimensions of learners' social life and the wider social and economic contexts in which learning and technology are located. The ability to develop a rich…

In this essay, the authors consider the challenge made by two keynote speakers at recent social work research conferences, one in the United States and the other in Europe. Both spoke of a knowledge crisis in social work. Both John Brekke (Society for Social Work and Research) and Peter Sommerfeld (First Annual European Conference for Social Work…

In this article, we attempt to honor the rich legacy of Derrick Bell by detailing how exploring his specific contributions to critical race theory (CRT) provided lessons for developing and refining critical race pedagogy (CRP). We examine Bell's racial realism thesis in connection with his pedagogical work. In doing so, we find that he was as…

In this study, we investigate the interplay between context and agency for three early-career academics as they seek to develop their teaching. Our analysis is conducted in light of Archer's realist social theory, framed by critical realism. We argue that it is possible to see ways in which Archer's account of the interplay between structure and…

This paper reports on the findings of a formative evaluation of the mentorship support programme run by the Maskh'iSizwe Centre of Excellence for recipients of its bursaries. Learning theory traditions have typically been divided into those that prioritise individual cognition versus those that prioritise the context in which learning occurs. In…