Positive social transformation in critical qualitative research in education

Abstract

The notion critical is one of the most frequent and yet contested qualifiers of empirical studies in education. A tremendous body of research has been conducted under the banner of the critical all with differing attributions to the term and the nature of the study in general. This study seeks to understand the constructions of “criticality” and the strategies of positive social transformation sought in critical qualitative research in education. It also problematizes contemporary portrayals of the “critical” in regards to the question of referentiality and bordering and the associations between critique and critical, while examining architecture of the critical in the field of educational research. Towards this end, it sets out to map theoretical and practical variations across critical researches in an attempt to reconstruct the implications that such variations may have for the field of education.