Michel Serres was a successful scholar who made a living within the university on two continents. However, he also viewed the university with great trepidation and tried to warn young scholars against falling victim to the university culture that encouraged a scholar to become a critic and not do original work. In place of the current university…

This paper seeks to raise awareness among educational researchers and practitioners of some significant weaknesses and internal contradictions of randomised control trials (RCTs). Although critiques throughout the years from education scholars have pointed to the detrimental effects of this experimental approach on education practice and values,…

In contemporary writing on higher education, globalization and internationalization are increasingly popular terms, and they are also increasingly being used as frameworks for higher education research. This article discusses the meaning and application of these terms, documents their usage in higher education research, and critically reviews this…

As preparation for the rhetoric and composition job market becomes more readily available through multiple sources, some cover letter writers may need clarification on the well-meaning but perhaps conflicting responses to writing given to them by mentors from differing backgrounds, statuses, and epistemes. This article seeks to illuminate the…

Educational research, and research in the Social Sciences more generally, has experienced a growth in the introduction of ethical review boards since the 1990s. Increasingly, universities have set up ethics review procedures that require researchers to submit applications seeking approval to conduct research. Review boards and the rules and…

Eleanor Leacock (1922-1987) was a cultural anthropologist and prominent critic of the "culture of poverty" framework. This paper analyzes Leacock's writings on the culture of poverty with the following questions in mind: How did Leacock's critique of the culture of poverty framework evolve over time? What was her dissatisfaction with the…

Much contemporary ethnography hopes to engage with a community to justify social critique. Whether from problem selection, interpersonal rewards, or a desire for exchange, researchers often take the "side" of informants. Such an approach, linked to "public ethnography," marginalizes a once-traditional approach to fieldwork,…

Educational philosophy has not discussed Foucault's publications on the Iranian Revolution and the related controversy. Foucauldian concepts are applied to education, though his only writings which "sidetracked" him from exploring power within the state, namely, his journalistic accounts of his visits to Iran, remain unexplored in our…

This paper offers a defense of Robin Barrow's main arguments in "Giving Teaching Back to Teachers", including additional material concerning the inability of the aggregate data and statistical methods employed in research in education (and research on teaching) to speak to individual teachers and students or to particular classrooms.…

In this essay, Rachel Schachter and Donald Freeman present the familiar problem in studying and improving teaching: how to connect what teachers know and think with what they do as they teach. They outline how research on the public and private worlds of teaching has become bifurcated, with the private side of the work often disconnected from…

In volume 103 of "Modern Language Journal," Stephen May suggested that the "multilingual turn" has not fully delivered on its promises, pointing out second language acquisition (SLA) researchers' continued focus on parallel monolingualisms rather than on dynamic bi/multilingualism, the lack of theorization of historicity in…

This article reviews Margaret Meek Spencer's body of work in relation to the various policies that she critiqued from the Bullock Report in 1974 to the National Literacy Strategy in 2004. She analysed increasingly conservative moves to promote a dominant, elitist version of school literacy. A Critical Realist perspective aligns with Margaret Meek…

This multivocal essay engages complex ethical issues raised in collaborative community-based research (CCBR). It critiques the fraught history and limiting conditions of current ethics codes and review processes, and engages persistent troubling questions about the ethicality of research practices and universities themselves. It cautions against…

Lewis Terman is widely seen as the "father of gifted education," yet his work is controversial. Terman's "mixed legacy" includes the pioneering work in the creation of intelligence tests, the first large-scale longitudinal study, and the earliest discussions of gifted identification, curriculum, ability grouping, acceleration,…

This "in process" Conclusion to the Special Issue (SI) "Global politics of knowledge production in EER: 'New' theory and North-South representations" (The Journal of Environmental Education) aims to highlight relevant issues and acknowledged limitations and silences from the sample of critiques presented in the SI, all built…