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…

In this exchange between an EdD professor and one of their practitioner-scholars, the two recount their respective and overlapping journeys in Critical Social Theories for Just Schools and Communities. While the professor was trained as a philosopher and has embraced the theoretical throughout her career, the practitioner-scholar enrolled in the…

A common charge levelled at English and Welsh citizenship education, whether taught as a separate subject or incorporated into other disciplines, is that it encourages compliance more than it inspires critical thought. There is room within the compulsory citizenship framework, however, for teachers to advance genuinely critical attributes in…

The influence of social capital on an individual's educational achievements is the subject of numerous scientific papers. Research on social capital is most frequently based on Coleman's (1988) or Bourdieu's (1986) theories of capital, which are related to different paradigms of social theory: whereas Coleman's approach has its roots in structural…

The author engages critical media education and norm-critical pedagogy to map out possible methods of critical engagement of students during interpretation of the pedagogical facets of "The Boxtrolls" (film--2014). The paper discusses rich analytical material that may be explored by employing "The Boxtrolls" story. The paper…

In "Voices of Modernity," Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs write their grand overview of the birth and maturation of modernity. Bauman and Briggs understand modernity as a discursive construction that opposes traditional and modern developments, ways of being, and modes of understanding. Central in this narrative project of modernity…

This article is based on an empirical study of the importance of a symmetrical relationship between higher education institutions (HEIs) and cognate industry in Ghana. Using social capital theory as the theoretical underpinning of the study, the authors investigate how social structure and networks serve to explain HEI-industry relationships. The…

This paper describes an aspect of reflective practice referred to as situated reflective practice. The overarching theory is derived from social theories of structuration and reflexivity. In particular, from Giddens' theory of structuration, which sees social life as an interplay of agency and structure. Discussion of the research reported here…

This article focuses on the design of a critical realist review that deployed Bhaskar's resolution, redescribing, retroduction, eliminating, identifying, and correcting schema and Pawson and Tilley's Context-Mechanism-Outcome configuration underpinned by realist social theory. Methodologically, the review examined the relationship between…

Bourdieu's version of field theory has had an impressive impact on the ways that sociologists of education conceptualize educational practices. These accounts tend to focus on the varying levels of ontological complicity established between students' cultural dispositions and educational institutions. In this paper, the wisdom of these…

Evidence for Bourdieu's social reproduction theory and its contributions to understanding educational inequality has been relatively mixed. Critics discount the usefulness of core concepts such as cultural capital and habitus and most studies invoking these concepts have focused only on one or the other, often conflating the two, to the…

This article engages with Atkinson's recent criticisms of concepts of collective habitus, such as "institutional" and "familial" habitus, in order to defend their conceptual utility and theoretical coherence. In so doing we promote a flexible understanding of habitus as "both" an individual and a collective concept. By retaining this flexibility…

Recent media attention concerning the escalation of crime on college campuses has created a sense of urgency to address how crime will impact the largest community college system in the United States, California Community Colleges. Crime can deter academic success and social engagement. This study utilizes social disorganization theory to examine…

This article deals with questions relating to the role of education and especially Higher Education in the reproduction of class division in society. Social classes and how they are formed and reproduced has always been one of the greatest challenges for Marxism and social theory in general. The questions regarding the role of education, and…

Social capital is frequently offered up as a variable to explain such educational outcomes as academic attainment, drop-out rates and cognitive development. Yet, despite its popularity amongst social scientists, social capital theory remains the object of some scepticism, particularly in respect of its explanatory ambitions. I provide an account…