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Critical Inquiry and Inquiry-Oriented Education

Opinion: K.P. Mohanan, Professor, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune

Human violence has multiple roots. Someone who stabs another in a fit of road-rage is acting under blind emotions. Someone who cannot kill humans but is prepared to kill animals has not expanded the scope of their ethical considerations beyond humans. And someone who wages war against another country is guided by ideological or economic factors, unaffected by ethics. To deal with violence, then, education must incorporate strands that aim at the emotional, ethical and intellectual foundations for peace.

Educating emotion requires helping the young liberate themselves from negative emotions such as anger, hostility, hatred, cruelty, intolerance, selfishness and competitiveness, while strengthening positive emotions such as empathy, compassion, love, and the spirit of altruism.

Educating the intellect for peace involves helping learners protect themselves from ideologies of violence. It should also empower them to change systems and practices that either promote violence or fail to prevent violence.

Ethical foundations draw on both emotion and intellect. Enriching the natural ethical instincts is a matter of emotions. Expanding the scope of ethical considerations is a matter of both emotions and reasoning. And connecting ethical values and principles to one’s actions and practices is a matter of reasoning.

In sum, we need a form of education that combines the emotional and the intellectual. In this article, my concern is with the intellectual part.

Intellectual education needs to include not only the information and knowledge to work towards a non-violent world but also the abilities of critical thinking and inquiry to investigate the causes of violence, and to find ways to dissolve those causes. This means that Inquiry-Oriented Education (IOE), which seeks to develop the capacity for rational inquiry, has to be recognised as an important strand of education. What follows are my reflections on the role of rational inquiry in education and of critical inquiry as a specific form of rational inquiry.

What is Rational Inquiry?

Inquiry is the investigation of a question on the basis of our own experience and reasoning, to look for an answer and arrive at a conclusion.

It involves:

Questions whose answers we wish to find out
Methodological strategies to look for answers
Answers to the questions, and conclusions based on them
Rational justification (proof, evidence, arguments) for the conclusions
Thinking critically about our own or others’ conclusions and justification

Rational inquiry is inquiry that is committed to the following axioms:

Rejecting Logical Contradictions : We must reject statements that are logically contradictory
Accepting Logical Consequences : If we accept a set of statements, then we must also accept their logical consequences

By ‘logical contradiction’, we mean a combination of a statement and its negation. Thus, the statement that the earth is flat and the earth is not flat constitutes a logical contradiction. A logical consequence of a set of statements is a conclusion derived from them through logic. Thus, the conclusion that all humans are vertebrates is a logical consequence of these statements: (i) all humans are primates; (ii) all primates are mammals; and (iii) all mammals are vertebrates.

For readers who wish to go beyond this brief sketch, a wide range of examples of rational inquiry for school and college education are available at www.schoolofthinq.com

Inquiry-Oriented Education, which seeks to develop the capacity for rational inquiry, has to be recognised as an important strand of education.

What is Critical Inquiry?

There are many situations where we do not realise our ignorance. We also take many beliefs and practices for granted, without questioning. When we subject such domains to critical thinking, we are pursuing a special kind of rational inquiry, called critical inquiry, which begins with doubting and questioning what has been taken for granted (analogous to ‘interrogating/cross-examining’ an ‘expert witness’ including ourselves) and demonstrating that we don’t know what we think we know.

Questions for critical inquiry are triggered by critical thinking. Critical thinking is a set of mental processes for evaluating the merit of something . ‘Merit’ here could be the truth of a statement (e.g., the statement, ‘That the earth is round’ is true.), the usefulness of a product, action, practice, or policy to achieve a given goal (e.g., death penalty to effectively deter crime), the ethical desirability of an action, practice, or policy (e.g., the ethical rightness of the death penalty), the beauty of a work of art (e.g., Is da Vinci’s Mona Lisa a great painting?), or the value of something that we (ought to) strive for (e.g., we ought to liberate ourselves from anger and hatred).

Mathematical and scientific inquiries offer fruitful emotion-free terrains for the practice of critical inquiry.

Examples of Critical Inquiry

Critical inquiry into issues of terrorism, communal violence, forced migrations, xenophobia, nationalist and religious ideologies that promote violence, and the relation between economic policies and violence, are of direct relevance to education for peace. Such issues, however, are emotionally charged. They might be seductive for beginners, but precisely because of their emotional appeal, there is a danger that when investigating them, feelings replace thinking and assertions of personal opinions replace rational conclusions.

My experience suggests that for beginners to engage with such topics with adequate detachment, clarity and rigour, they need to strengthen their mental equipment in two ways: by striving for emotional maturity, in order to detach feelings from reflection and reasoning; and by strengthening and sharpening their intellectual capacity, using topics that would not create emotional storms.

Mathematical and scientific inquiries offer fruitful emotion-free terrains for the practice of critical inquiry. Let me sketch an example.

Suppose we begin a class activity for eighth graders with an innocent-sounding question: How many angles does a triangle have? The textbook answer is: Three. We can now initiate critical inquiry: What is an angle such that triangles have three angles and rectangles have four?

Most novices would think of this as a trivial question. But then, the function of critical inquiry is to challenge complacency.

What is an angle? A student’s answer might be: “If two straight lines meet in such a way that they do not form a single straight line, what lies between them is an angle.” If so, the combination of two straight lines in Fig. 1 forms an angle, but not in Fig. 2.

What is a right angle? What is an acute angle? What is an obtuse angle? What is a straight angle? The standard textbook answers are: “A right angle measures 90º; an acute angle is less than a right angle; an obtuse angle is more than a right angle (but less than two right angles); and a straight angle is two right angles.”

We now proceed to rigorous reasoning. Given these ‘definitions’, it follows that angle ABC in Fig. 1 is an obtuse angle; while angle DEF in Fig. 2 is a staight angle. Since any straight line can be viewed as being made up of two straight lines at a straight angle, there is a straight angle at every point in a straight line.

How many angles does a straight line have? Since every finite straight line has infinitely many points, it has infinitely many straight angles. Therefore, it has infinitely many angles. Since a triangle is made of three straight lines, it has infinitely many angles. This conclusion negates the textbook answer to the question we started with.

We now have to either accept the conclusion that triangles and rectangles have infinitely many angles, or re-define the concept of angle such that we abandon the concept of straight angle from the textbook.

If schools around the world could engage in discussions pursuing rational inquiry into principles and concepts of ethics, there would perhaps be far less violence in the world.

This begins an inquiry into questions whose answers we realise we don’t know: What is an angle?

This example illustrates the strategy of ‘problematisation’ in critical inquiry: we begin with questions on what we think we know and take for granted; we engage critically with the answer; and realise that we don’t know what we thought we knew, triggering further inquiry.

As I said, math and science offer rich terrains for emotion-free practice of critical inquiry. Once learners acquire the necessary sharpness and strength of mind, they can be guided into critical inquiry in emotion-riddled terrains. We now explore two such examples.

2. Freedom Fighters and Terrorists

We give students the following hypothetical story.

Suppose a country, Arraya, rules over an island, Parumbi. The people of Parumbi don’t want Arraya to govern them, but the people of Arraya want Parumbi under them. Parumbians take up arms to achieve their goal. Their supporters describe them as ‘freedom fighters’, and their activity as an ‘independence struggle’. But the government of Arraya and its supporters describe them as ‘terrorists’, and their activity as ‘terrorism’.

We then give them the following real world story:

An article, “Terrorism, Not Freedom Struggle” (The Times of India, 10 August 2001) stated that “rejecting Islamabad’s description of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir as freedom struggle,” India’s external affairs minister said that under no circumstance should India accept “Islamabad’s attempt to confer cross-border terrorism a kind of diplomatic legitimacy 1 …” Pakistan’s newspaper Business Recorder quoted Harry Truman as having warned that “once a government is committed to silencing the voice of dissent, it has only one way to go. To employ increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” It went on to say: “Nothing illustrates the Indian policy, vis-à-vis occupied Kashmir, better than the above quoted remark of the American leader 2 .”

The students’ task is to spell out how we would distinguish between ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘terrorists’ and to define ‘terrorism’ and ‘independence struggle’ such that we can engage in a rational debate on whether a particular movement qualified as an independence struggle or as terrorism.

3. Nation and Nationalism

Activity 1 Write down the answers to the following questions: What is your nationality? Do you feel good when you hear your national anthem or see your national flag? Are there nations that you dislike or are hostile to? Write the names of those nations.

Activity 2 Now consider the following question: What is a nation?

Discussion : Two meanings of the term ‘nation’ emerged:

People-nation : nation as a people united by a shared ancestry, language, and culture. (e.g. ‘Naga-nation,’ ‘Navaho- nation,’ ‘Palestine as a stateless nation’). People-nation prompts loyalty and, devotion to the people with shared ancestry, language, and culture.
State-nation : nation as a government that rules a population in a given geographical region. (e.g. India, Pakistan, Vietnam, South Korea, United States of America, Australia, Nigeria, Argentina, and Germany). State-nations are results of war, conquest and power negotiations; they don’t require shared ethnicity, language, or culture.

A promising avenue for emotion-education is perhaps something along the lines of mindfulness meditation: ‘looking’ internally at the contents of one’s own experience . . .

Activity 3 Consider the concept of nationalism : We may define it as: a form of collective identity that prompts loyalty and devotion to one’s nation .

Discussion : Given the two distinct concepts of nation, we needed to recognise the corresponding concepts of nationalism: people-nationalism and state-nationalism. People-nationalism might perceive the rulers as ‘foreign’, prompting the political separation of one’s people from those rulers. State-nationalism would perceive those involved in that separation as ‘traitors’. State-nationalism then is loyalty and devotion to one’s rulers and is identical to ‘patriotism’.

Activity 4 Let us go back to the questions we asked earlier: What is your nationality? Do you feel good when you hear your national anthem or national flag?

Discussion : Is your concept of nationality grounded in people-nation or state-nation? Do you feel good when you hear the national anthem or see the national flag? Do you feel patriotism rise in your heart? Does that feeling come from loyalty to the people, or to the state?

What would your nationality be now?

Which national anthem and national flag would produce feelings of patriotism in your grandchildren? Which nations are your grandchildren likely to hate?

Now answer the same questions by assuming that there were no wars anywhere in the world after the tenth century, and that the political map continued without change till today.

After thinking through these questions, go back to the concepts of state-nation and peoples-nation and write a one-page reflection on the concepts of nation, nationality, nationalism, and patriotism, and the role of violence in the origin and evolution of nations.

An Example of Ethical Inquiry

As a form of rational inquiry, ethical inquiry seeks to help develop the capacity to construct and evaluate ethical theories at individual and collective levels and to deduce the ethical judgements derived from those theories.

In a class session that I did for 6th Graders in Pune, India, the children came up with this ethical principle: It is immoral to kill humans and other creatures . During the subsequent discussion, one child said that the principle doesn’t apply to enemies. The entire class agreed that it is okay to kill enemies. The principle was revised as: It is immoral to kill fellow creatures other than enemies .

Some students even suggested that killing enemies is our ethical duty. This resulted in the following dialogue:

At this point, they were no longer sure about their position on enemies. I gave them a few minutes to discuss the problem in groups and come up with a concept of ‘enemy’ such that killing enemies is okay. After some discussion, most groups came up with the following statements:

Those who want to kill others are our enemies.

Those enemies exist in both India and Pakistan.

I would have liked to raise the question: Is it morally right to kill someone who has killed another? This could have taken us to fairly complex issues like mercy-killing, honour-killing, war, abortion and death penalty. I did not pursue that line of inquiry, for I wasn’t sure if it was age-appropriate for the children.

If schools around the world could engage in discussions of this kind, pursuing rational inquiry into principles and concepts of ethics, there would perhaps be far less violence in the world.

Contemplative Inquiry

As mentioned earlier, the education of emotions has an important role to play in minimising human violence. A promising avenue for emotion-education is perhaps something along the lines of mindfulness meditation: ‘looking’ internally at the contents of one’s own experience, including sensory and non-sensory experience, as well as the experience of emotions. Meditative techniques such as attending to breathing, body scan, loving-kindness and observing thought are forms of looking at the inner world 3 .

The so-called contemplative inquiry in this tradition is a form of rational inquiry that takes the results of such introspection as the grounds of inquiry to arrive at rational conclusions about oneself. This allows us to address questions as, “Am I a covert racist?” “Am I as ethical as I think?”, “Do I carry hatred in me?”, as part of inquiry into a fundamental question: “Who am I?”

Instead of merely experiencing emotions such as anger or hostility, we can employ contemplative inquiry with the rational-perceptual part of the mind examining with equanimity the emotional suffering part. The outcome of attention then forms the basis for rational investigation of oneself.

Inquiry-Oriented Education

Helping the young to develop the capacity to engage in these diverse modes of rational inquiry, combined with practices that enhance positive emotions and dissolve negative ones, is an imperative that institutionalised education can no longer afford to ignore in today’s world. Mathematical, scientific, conceptual, ethical and contemplative inquiries play significant roles in this enterprise, which would involve incorporating the strand of Inquiry-Oriented Education into schooling at the primary, secondary, as well as tertiary levels. UNESCO MGIEP has currently undertaken such a move in a collaborative endeavour with ThinQ 4 in its LIBRE programme.

1 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Terrorism-not-freedom-struggle-Jaswant/articleshow/1086523490.cms

2 http://www.brecorder.com/index.php?option=com_news&view=single&id=1108304

3 http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_choose_a_type_of_mindfulness_meditation

4 www.schoolofthinq.com

K.P. Mohanan received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and taught at the University of Texas in Austin, MIT, Stanford University and the National University of Singapore (NUS). At NUS, he initiated the General Education Programme for undergraduate students and, as part of this programme, created a web course on Academic Knowledge and Inquiry.

In January 2011, he moved to IISER-Pune, where he created a three-course package on rational inquiry, covering scientific, mathematical, and conceptual inquiries. He is currently engaged in developing courses and programmes on different types of inquiry-based learning for high school and college students.

UNESCO MGIEP, ICSSR Building, First Floor 35 Ferozshah Road, New Delhi-110001 Phone: +91 11 23072356-60

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Harvard Library
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Harvard Graduate School of Education - Gutman Library

Critical Pedagogy

Introduction to Critical Pedagogy

About this Guide

What is critical pedagogy, why is critical pedagogy important.

Types of Critical Pedagogy
Getting Started with Critical Pedagogy
Publications in Critical Pedagogy

Critical Pedagogy Research Librarian

This guide gives an overview to critical pedagogy and its vitalness to teaching and education. It is not comprehensive, but is meant to give an introduction to the complex topic of critical pedagogy and impart an understanding of its deeper connection to critical theory and education.

One working definition of critical pedagogy is that it “is an educational theory based on the idea that schools typically serve the interests of those who have power in a society by, usually unintentionally, perpetually unquestioned norms for relationships, expectations, and behaviors” (Billings, 2019). Based on critical theory, it was first theorized in the US in the 70s by the widely-known Brazilian educator Paolo Freire in his canonical book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2018), but has since taken on a life of its own in its application to all facets of teaching and learning. The "pedagogy of the oppressed," or what what we know today to be the basis of critical pedagogy, is described by Freire as:

"...a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity. This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade...[It] sis an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization." (p. 48)

Perhaps a more straightforward definition of critical pedagogy is "a radical approach to education that seeks to transform oppressive structures in society using democratic and activist approaches to teaching and learn" (Braa & Callero, 2006).

There are many applications of theory-based pedagogy that privilege minoritarian thought such as antiracist pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, engaged pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and social justice, to name a few.

Billings, S. (2019). Critical pedagogy. Salem press encyclopedia. New York: Salem Press.

Braa, D., & Callero, P. (2006, October). Critical pedagogy and classroom praxis. Teaching Sociology, 34 , 357-369.

Freire, P. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Critical Pedagogy is an important framework and tool for teaching and learning because it:

recognizes systems and patterns of oppression within society at-large and education more specifically, and in doing so, decreases oppression and increases freedom
empowers students through enabling them to recognize the ways in which "dominant power operates in numerous and often hidden ways
offers a critique of education that acknowledges its political nature while spotlighting the fact that it is not neutral
encourages students and instructors to challenge commonly accepted assumptions that reveal hidden power structures, inequities, and injustices

Kincheloe, J. L. (2004). Critical pedagogy primer. P. Lang.

Next: Types of Critical Pedagogy >>
Last Updated: May 15, 2024 9:48 AM
URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/criticalpedagogy

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Critical Inquiry

What is critical inquiry.

Students protesting gun violence in Washington DC #marchforourlives

The purpose of this site is to support social studies educators who seek to teach a pedagogical approach called critical inquiry.

Broadly, we define inquiry as the pursuit of authentic questions that are relevant to students and important to society. We define critical as curriculum which addresses power relationships and social injustices with the aim of taking tangible steps toward change for a more just world. We invite you into our community to help us figure out what this looks line in practice.

Social studies scholars and teachers from around the country will kick off this project at the “Critical Inquiry in Social Studies Education: Directions for Research and Practice” conference to be held on October 16-18, 2024 in Denton, Texas.

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1st Edition

Handbook of Critical Education Research Qualitative, Quantitative, and Emerging Approaches

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Description

This handbook offers a contemporary and comprehensive review of critical research theory and methodology. Showcasing the work of contemporary critical researchers who are harnessing and building on a variety of methodological tools, this volume extends beyond qualitative methodology to also include critical quantitative and mixed-methods approaches to research. The critical scholars contributing to this volume are influenced by a diverse range of education disciplines, and represent multiple countries and methodological backgrounds, making the handbook an essential resource for anyone doing critical scholarship. The book moves from the theoretical to the specific, examining various paradigms for engaging in critical scholarship, various methodologies for doing critical research, and the political, ethical, and practical issues that arise when working as a critical scholar. In addition to mapping the field, contributions synthesize literature, offer concrete examples, and explore relevant contexts, histories, assumptions, and current practices, ultimately fostering generative thinking that contributes to future methodological and theoretical breakthroughs. New as well as seasoned critical scholars will find within these pages exciting new ideas, challenging questions, and insights that spur the continuous evolution and grow the influence of critical research methods and theories in the education and human disciplines.

Section 1: Introduction: Why Critical Research? Why Now? Section One Introduction 1. Critical Education Research: Emerging Perspectives on Methods and Methodologies 2. The Paradigm Wars Reconsidered: Looking for a Legacy 3. Critical Approaches to Quantitative Research: Review, Critique, and Applications 4. Black in Time: Critical Research Practices for Studying Anti-Blackness in Schools Section 2: Epistemology, Theory, and Paradigms Section Two Introduction 5. Education and Colonialism: Three Frameworks 6. The White Supremacist Core Ontological Architecture of Western Modernity 7. Queering Critical Educational Research: Methodological Activism Within a Cultural Location of the ‘Not Yet’ 8. Reflexivity 10.6: The Matter of Reflexivity or What Matter Matters in Postqualitative Inquiry 9. The Spatial Logic of Epistemic Imaginaries: Guided by Édouard Glissant 10. Where Are the Black Folx? A Queer Critical Race Theory Intersectional Analysis Section 3: Introduction: Critical Qualitative Research Design S ection Three Introduction 11. Toward Critical Approaches to Case Study Research 12. Critical Ethnography in Education Research: More Than a Method 13. Critical Auto (-/) Ethnography in Everyday and Educational Research for Social Justice 14. Critical Narrative Inquiry: Reaching Toward Understanding, Moving to Resistance, and Acting in Solidarity 15. A "Good" University: Community-based Critical Participatory Action Research, University-Community Relations, and Affordable Housing 16. Using Critical Discourse Analysis to Challenge and Change Educational Practice and Policy 17. Toward a Critical History of Education:　The Uses of the Past and its Possibilities for the Present Section 4: Introduction: Critical Quantitative Research Design Section Four Introduction 18. (Un)Learning White Supremacy Ideologies to Advance Critical Approaches to Quantitative Inquiry 19. Applied Quantitative Inquiry through a Critical Disability Studies Lens 20. Critical Quantitative Intersectionality: Maximizing Integrity in Expanding Tools and Applications 21. What is the Point?: Reimagining the Critical Quantitative Research of Big and Large-Scale Data Sets to Advance Racial Equity: Section 5: Introduction: Critical Emerging Approaches Section Five Introduction 22. Disrupting the Binary: Critical Mixed-Methods as Academic Resistance 23. Critical Networks in Critical Times 24. Critical Space Analysis: Integrating Geographic Information Systems into Critical Educational Research 25. Multimodal Inquiries Inspired by Post-Philosophies: More-than-Human Relationalities that Produce (Critical) Inquiry(ies) Section 6: Introduction: Data Collection in Critical Research Section Six Introduction 26. Listening and Learning Through Critical Interviewing Approaches in Qualitative Inquiry 27. Oral History as Critique: Memories Disrupting the Dominant Narrative 28. Critical and Feminist Cartographies of Observation: Procedural, Personal, and Political Considerations in the Documentation and Analysis of Life Worlds 29. Critical Survey Research Section 7: Introduction: Critical Data Analysis Section Seven Introduction 30. Using Qualitative Data Analysis Software to Help Explore Critical Research Questions: A Tool, Not a Replacement 31. Shifting Policy Meanings: Argumentative Discourse Analysis and Historical Policy Research 32. The Ethics and Bureaucratization of Data Management 33. Advancing QuantCrit in Critical Race Spatial Research: Exploring Methodological Possibilities by Mapping Chicanx Baccalaureate Attainment 34. Beyond Representation: Decoloniality Content Analysis as a Methodology to De/Reconstruct the Sociology of Expectations in Curriculum Section 8: Introduction: Politics and Ethics of Doing Critical Educational Research Section Eight Introduction 35. Critical Educational Research and Social Movements 36. "To Whom Are We Accountable?":　Exploring the Tensions Inherent within Critical Scholarship 37. Families and Educators Co-Designing: Critical Education Research as Participatory Public Scholarship 38. Validity as Democratic Deliberation: The Pragmatist Imperative for Critical Inquiry 39. Topographies of Research as Relational: Exploring the Politics and Ethics of Positionality and Relationality in Research Processes 40. Institutional Review Boards: Processes and Critiques

Michelle D. Young is Dean of the Berkeley School of Education and Professor of Education Policy and Leadership at University of California – Berkeley, USA. Sarah Diem is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri, USA.

Critics' Reviews

"This is the handbook we've been waiting for! The chapters in this crucial volume not only refuse the dehumanizing paradigm of research that has done so much harm in minoritized communities, they offer the deep, nuanced guidance for undertaking more liberatory inquiries we have so urgently needed in the field. Reckoning with anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, and multiple forms of oppression, rooted in histories of invisibilized expertise, resilience and joy, the authors provide profound ontological and epistemological insights as well as tangible methodological approaches that help light the way forward for scholars, students, and researchers at all stages!" --Ann Ishimaru, Associate Professor, Educational Foundations, Leadership, & Policy, University of Washington 　 "How do two leading scholars and thinkers in the field of education policy and leadership—Michelle D. Young and Sarah Diem—follow up on their highly influential book, Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis: Moving Beyond Tradition ? Simply, they push us to understand further, by comprehensively reviewing, complicating, and interrogating the very critical research methodologies that they and others of us in the field employ. In the Handbook of Critical Education Research: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Emerging Approaches, Diem and Young situate the significant expansion of education research methodological tools and approaches within histopolitical and contemporary sociocultural realities, to offer us a brave, engaging, and well-researched volume that brings together exciting and smart critical scholars from across the globe. It is not only a must read, but a must use for all education researchers." --Jill Koyama, Vice Dean and Professor, Educational Leadership & Innovation, Arizona State University 　 "Given the continued weight of historical positivisms, this book marks how critical work is gaining parity across the paradigms in educational research. Neo-liberalism might remain hegemonic, but "remembering with" many of the authors in terms of origins, my hope is that the push of the book toward not so much ideology critique as against methodological conservatism engenders a "living into" more nuanced approaches alive to the "afters" of the many inequities so very much with us." --Patti Lather, Emeritus Professor, Cultural Foundations, Technology, & Qualitative Inquiry, The Ohio State University

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Using Critical Theory in Educational Research

First Online: 27 February 2019

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Kamden K. Strunk 3 &
Jasmine S. Betties 4

Critical theory remains a central theoretical framework in research for equity and social justice. In this chapter, we introduce some of the major concepts in critical theory and the educational theory of critical pedagogy. We also attempt to differentiate critical theory from other perspectives like critical race theory, with which it is often conflated. We also suggest ways in which critical theory can be mobilized in educational research. While a short chapter such as this cannot capture the complexity and long history of critical theory and critical pedagogy approaches, we aim to provide a useful introduction and resources for those wishing to go further with this perspective.

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Critical Pedagogy: Critical Thinking as a Social Practice

Critical Theories of Education: An Introduction

Critical Theory and Its Aftermath

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Strunk, K.K., Betties, J.S. (2019). Using Critical Theory in Educational Research. In: Strunk, K.K., Locke, L.A. (eds) Research Methods for Social Justice and Equity in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05900-2_6

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Critical literacy.

Vivian Maria Vasquez Vivian Maria Vasquez American University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.20
Published online: 29 March 2017

Changing student demographics, globalization, and flows of people resulting in classrooms where students have variable linguistic repertoire, in combination with new technologies, has resulted in new definitions of what it means to be literate and how to teach literacy. Today, more than ever, we need frameworks for literacy teaching and learning that can withstand such shifting conditions across time, space, place, and circumstance, and thrive in challenging conditions. Critical literacy is a theoretical and practical framework that can readily take on such challenges creating spaces for literacy work that can contribute to creating a more critically informed and just world. It begins with the roots of critical literacy and the Frankfurt School from the 1920s along with the work of Paulo Freire in the late 1940s (McLaren, 1999; Morrell, 2008) and ends with new directions in the field of critical literacy including finding new ways to engage with multimodalities and new technologies, engaging with spatiality- and place-based pedagogies, and working across the curriculum in the content areas in multilingual settings. Theoretical orientations and critical literacy practices are used around the globe along with models that have been adopted in various state jurisdictions such as Ontario, in Canada, and Queensland, in Australia.

critical literacy
critical pedagogy
social justice
multiliteracies
text analysis
discourse analysis
everyday politics
language ideologies

Historical Orientation

Luke ( 2014 ) describes critical literacy as “the object of a half-century of theoretical debate and practical innovation in the field of education” (p. 21). Discussion about the roots of critical literacy often begin with principles associated with the Frankfurt School from the 1920s and their focus on Critical Theory. The Frankfurt School was created by intellectuals who carved out a space for developing theories of Marxism within the academy and independently of political parties. While focusing on political and economic philosophy, they emphasized the importance of class struggle in society. More prominently associated with the roots of critical literacy is Paulo Freire, beginning with his work in the late 1940s (McLaren, 1999 ; Morrell, 2008 ), which focused on critical consciousness and critical pedagogy. Freire’s work was centered on key concepts, which included the notion that literacy education should highlight the critical consciousness of learners. In his work in the 1970s Freire wrote that if we consider learning to read and write as acts of knowing, then readers and writers must assume the role of creative subjects who reflect critically on the process of reading and writing itself along with reflecting on the significance of language ( 1972 ). Together with Macedo in the 1980s, Freire popularized the concept that reading is not just about decoding words. In their work, Freire and Macedo ( 1987 ) noted that reading the word is simultaneously about reading the world. This means that our reading of any text is mediated through our day-to-day experience and the places, spaces, and languages that we encounter, use, and occupy. This critical reading can lead to disrupting and “unpacking myths and distortions and building new ways of knowing and acting upon the world” (Luke, 2014 , p. 22). As such this conceptualization of critical literacy disrupts the notion of false consciousness described earlier by Hegel and Marx (Luke, 2014 ).

The Frankfurt School scholars and Freire focused their work on adult education. For instance in the 1960s Freire organized a campaign for hundreds of sugar cane workers in Brazil to participate in a literacy program that centered on critical pedagogy. His work became known as liberatory, whereby he worked to empower oppressed workers. Critiques of Freire have focused primarily on claims that the liberatory pedagogy he espoused was unidirectional because educators liberated students. The binary represented here was also seen as problematic. Nevertheless his grounding work pushed to the fore the importance and effects of critical pedagogy as a way of making visible and examining relations of power to change inequitable ways of being. Work done by the Frankfurt School and Freire were overtly political and inspired the political nature and democratic potential of education as central to critical approaches to pedagogy (Comber, 2016 ) as seen in work done by researchers and educators such as Campano, Ghiso and Sánchez ( 2013 ), Janks ( 2010 ), and Vasquez ( 2004 ).

Luke ( 2014 ) noted antecedents to these approaches including early-twentieth-century exemplars of African-American community education in the United States that were established in many cities (Shannon, 1998 ), Brecht’s experiments with political drama in Europe (Weber & Heinen, 2010 ), and work by Hoggart ( 1957 ) and Williams ( 1977 ) on post-war cultural British studies amongst others.

Theoretical Orientations

Various theoretical paradigms and traditions of scholarship have influenced definitions of critical literacy and its circulation, as well as its practice. These include feminist poststructuralist theories (Davies, 1993 ; Gilbert, 1992 ) post colonialist traditions (Meacham, 2003 ), critical race theory (Ladson-Billings, 1999 , 2003 ), critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995 ; Janks, 2010 ), cultural studies (Pahl & Rowsell, 2011 ), critical media literacy (Share, 2009 , 2010 ), queer theory (Vicars, 2013 ), place conscious pedagogy (Comber, 2016 ), and critical sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007 ; Blommaert, 2013 ; McKinney, 2016 ). Theoretical toolkits, or combinations of such theories have resulted in different orientations to critical literacy. As such it is viewed as a concept, a framework, or perspective for teaching and learning, a way of being in the classroom, and a stance or attitude toward literacy work in schools. These different theoretical orientations help shape different views. Regardless, “the project remains understanding the relationship between texts, meaning-making and power to undertake transformative social action that contributes to the achievement of a more equitable social order” (Janks & Vasquez, 2011 , p. 1). As such, regardless of the view one takes, a common understanding is that critical literacy focuses on unequal power relations—and issues of social justice and equity—in support of diverse learners. Diversity of learners includes taking the languages they bring with them to school seriously and understanding the ways in which multilingual children are treated unjustly when their linguistic repertoires are excluded from classrooms.

There are also those who argue that critical literacies are not just orientations to teaching literacy but a way of being, living, learning, and teaching (Vasquez, 2005 , 2014a , 2015 ; Zacher Pandya & Avila, 2014 ). Vasquez ( 2001 , 2010 , 2014b ) describes critical literacy as a perspective and way of being that should be constructed organically, using the inquiry questions of learners, beginning on the first day of school with the youngest learners. From this perspective it follows that such a perspective or way of being cuts across the curriculum. Similarly Zacher Pandya and Avila ( 2014 ) and Vasquez, Tate, and Harste ( 2013 ) note the need for critical literacy to be defined by individuals, within their own contexts, once they have learned about, and experienced, its central ideas. Comber discusses this in terms of teachers’ dispositions, which include their discursive resources and repertoires of practice (Comber, 2006 ). As such critical literacy can be described as “an evolving repertoire of practices of analysis and interrogation which move between the micro features of texts and the macro conditions of institutions, focusing on how relations of power work through these practices” (Comber, 2013 , p. 589). Janks ( 2010 ), Kamler ( 2001 ), and Luke ( 2013 ) have noted more recently the importance of not only analyzing text but also designing and producing it as well. In this regard, equally important is to understand the position(s) from which we analyze text and also the position(s) from which we design and produce texts.

Critical Literacy in Practice around the Globe

Critical literacy has taken root differently in different places around the world but most notably in South Africa (Granville, 1993 ; Janks, 1993a , 2010 ; Janks et al., 2013 ), Australia and New Zealand (Comber, 2001 , 2016 ; Luke, 2000 ; Morgan, 1997 ; O’Brien, 2001 ), and the United States and Canada (Larson & Marsh, 2015 ; Lewison, Leland, & Harste, 2014 ; Pahl & Rowsell, 2011 ; Vasquez, 2001 , 2010 , 2014b ).

For instance, in South Africa, Hilary Janks ( 1993a , 1993b , 2010 , 2014 ) used critical literacy as a tool in the struggle against apartheid. Her work focused primarily on young adults and adolescents “to increase students’ awareness of the way language was used to oppress the black majority, to win elections, to deny education, to construct others, to position readers, to hide the truth, and to legitimate oppression” ( 2010 , p. 12). To this end, she produced Critical Language Awareness (CLA) materials for use with older children in South African schools (Janks et al., 2013 ). In Australia, critical materials were created, in the form of workbooks, to deconstruct literary texts (Mellor, Patterson, & O’Neill, 1987 , 1991 ). Also in Australia, work deriving from postcolonial theory, was produced by Freemantle Press (Martino, 1997 ; Kenworthy & Kenworthy, 1997 ). Some of these materials informed work done in middle school and high school settings by educators and researchers such as Morgan ( 1992 , 1994 ), Gilbert ( 1989 ), and Davies ( 1993 ).

Critical literacy work with younger children began to take place in the 1990s in Australia, where Barbara Comber’s work has been very influential. In particular, her work with Jenny O’Brien on creating spaces for critical literacy in an elementary school classroom, using newspaper and magazine ads, has been highly cited in the literature (O’Brien, 2001 ). In the United States and Canada, Vivian Vasquez’s work with children between ages three to five opened the field for exploration in settings involving very young children by using their inquiries about the world around them to question issues of social justice and equity, using the everyday as text (i.e., food packaging, media ads, popular culture), as well as children’s literature. Although there are growing accounts of critical literacy work in early years classrooms (Sanchez, 2011 ; Vander Zanden, 2016 ; Vander Zanden & Wohlwend, 2011 ), more examples of practice are needed as demonstrations of possibility in school settings with young children.

Earlier critical literacy work in early childhood and elementary settings focused on critically reading and deconstructing texts as a way to help students question versions of reality in the world around them. For example, in Australia, O’Brien ( 2001 ) explored ways in which Mother’s Day ads worked to position readers of such texts in particular ways. She described this work as “helping her children probe representations of women, and setting them purposeful reading, writing, and talking tasks” (p. 52). At around the same time, researchers such as Ivanič ( 1998 ) and Kamler ( 2001 ) began highlighting critical writing in their work with older children. Janks ( 2010 ) refers to this as an important move that enabled us to think where we might go after critically reading a text. She notes, “because texts are constructed word by word, image by image, they can be deconstructed—unpicked, unmade, the positions produced for the reader laid bare” (Janks, 2010 , p. 18). A space is thus created for us to think about “how texts may be rewritten and how multimodal texts can be redesigned” (Janks, 2010 , p. 19). Such perspectives further informed the work of educators and researchers of critical literacy. Comber and Nixon ( 2014 ), for instance, attended “to the importance of children’s agency through text production and related social action” (p. 81). Examples of this include work done by Vasquez ( 2001 , 2004 , 2010 , 2014b ) in building critical curriculum using her preschool students’ inquiry questions about inequities within their school as a way to disrupt and dismantle such inequity and create new more equitable practices and places in which to engage in such practices. Reading the world as a text that could be deconstructed and reconstructed created a space for Vasquez and her students to disrupt and rewrite problematic school practices. As noted by Janks ( 2010 ), “if repositioning text is tied to an ethic of social justice then redesign can contribute to the kind of identity and social transformation that Freire’s work advocates” (p. 18).

The notion of design and redesign was introduced to the field through the New London Group ( 1996 ) in their paper on multiliteracies. Kress and his colleagues (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006 ; Mavers, 2011 ) extend this work stating the importance of design as “the shaping of available resources into a framework which can act as a blueprint for the production of the object, entity, or event” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006 , p. 50). Janks ( 2003 ) refers to this as “a pedagogy of reconstruction,” while McKinney ( 2016 ) calls this transformative pedagogy. This pedagogy is integral to one of the most notable models to inform critical literacy practice, Janks’ Interdependent Model (Janks, 2010 ).

Critical literacy is also being used in state jurisdictions such as Ontario in Canada and Queensland in Australia, where governments have endorsed its use in school curricula. Its use is also growing in emerging and post colonial contexts (Norton, 2007 ; Lo et al., 2012 ). For instance, in her work in Karachi, Pakistan, Norton ( 2007 ) notes that students made frequent reference to the relationship between literacy, the distribution of resources, and international inequities. In Hong Kong, Lo et al. ( 2012 ) reported on “working with students to understand the social and political framing and consequences of texts” (p. 121). With regards to such work Luke ( 2004 ) has argued for the need to do justice to the lived experiences of physical and material deprivation in diverse communities throughout the globe. As such critical literacy should be adopted and adapted and should continue to emerge across a spectrum of political economies, nation states, and systems from autocratic/theocratic states to postcolonial states not only as an epistemic stance but also as a political and culturally transgressive position that works to create spaces for transformative social actions that can contribute to the achievement of a more equitable social order.

Influential Models

Different orientations to critical literacy have resulted in different models that impact critical pedagogy. Three influential models, in particular will be addressed here: Freebody and Luke’s Four Resources Model, Janks’ Interdependent Model, and Green’s 3D Model of Literacy.

Allan Luke and Peter Freebody have played a central role in making critical literacy accessible across continents. In particular their Four Resources Model (Luke & Freebody, 1999 ) has been widely adapted for use in classrooms from preschool to tertiary education settings. Their model focuses on different literacy practices that readers and writers should learn. These practices are learning to be code-breakers—recognizing, understanding, and using the fundamental features of written text such as the alphabet; learning to be text participants—using their own prior knowledge to interpret and make meaning from and bring meaning to text; understanding how to use different text forms; and becoming critical consumers of those forms—learning to critically analyze text and understand that texts are never neutral. Colin Lankshear and Michelle Knobel ( 2004 ) challenge Luke and Freebody’s model claiming it does not support literacy practices in a digitized world or for those who are “digitally at home”; those comfortable with and competent in using new technologies. In turn they offer examples of the kind of roles related to literacy practices in a digitized world assumed by authors of digital texts. These roles are as text designer, one who designs and produces multimedia or digital texts; text mediator or broker, one who summarizes or presents aspects of texts for others such as a blogger; text bricoleur, one who constructs or creates text using a range or collection of available things; and text jammer, one who re-presents text it in some way, such as by adding new words or phrases to an image as a way to subvert the original meaning (Lankshear & Knobel, 2004 ).

Larson and Marsh ( 2015 ), however, state that Lankshear and Knobel’s ( 2004 ) model focuses primarily on text production rather than text analysis. In comparison, Hilary Janks ( 2010 , 2014 ) in her model for critical literacy includes both text analysis and text design as integral elements. Janks’ model centers on a set of interdependent elements—namely access, domination/power, diversity, and design/re-design. She argues “different realizations of critical literacy operate with different conceptualizations of the relationship between language and power by foregrounding one or other of these elements” (Janks, 2010 , p. 23). She notes that these complementary and competing positions speak to the complexities of engaging with critical literacies and that they are crucially interdependent.

More recently, Comber reflected, “originally these approaches did not foreground the spatial dimensions of critical literacy”( 2016 , p. 11). Comber argues that insights from theories of space and place and literacy studies can create opportunities for designing and enacting culturally inclusive curriculum to support the needs of diverse learners. As such, in her work, one of the models she draws from is Green’s 3D Model of Literacy. This model is a multidimensional framework which argues that there are always three dimensions of literacy simultaneously at play: the operational, learning how the language works and ways that texts can be structured; the cultural, which involves the uses of literacy and in particular the ways that cultural learning is involved with content learning; and the critical, the ways in which we act and see in the world, along with how literacy can be used to shape lives in ways that better serve the interests of some over others. As such, Green’s model is a useful frame for unpacking links between literacy, place, and culture.

Debate, Controversy, and Critical Literacy

In spite of advances in the field with regards to critical literacy, there is still confusion about the difference between “critical” from the Enlightenment period, which focused on critical thinking and reasoning, and “critical” from Marx as an analysis of power. The debate and controversy around this continues. Definitions for critical literacy are often at the center of such debates, which are likely in response to attempts by some educators and researchers to pin down a specific definition for critical literacy. Theorists and educators including Comber ( 2016 ), Vasquez ( 2010 , 2014b ), and Luke ( 2014 ) maintain that as a framework for engaging in literacy work, it should look, feel, and sound different. As previously discussed, the models used as part of one’s critical literacy toolkit help contribute to the kinds of work one might accomplish from such a perspective. Critical literacy should also be used as a resource for accomplishing different sorts of life work depending on the context in which it is used as a perspective for teaching, learning, and participating with agency in different spaces and places. Vasquez ( 2010 , 2014b ) has referred to this framing as a way of being, where she has argued that critical literacy should not be an add-on but a frame through which to participate in the world in and outside of school. Such a frame does not necessarily involve taking a negative stance; rather, it means looking at an issue or topic in different ways, analyzing it, and being able to suggest possibilities for change and improvement. In this regard critical literacies can be pleasurable and transformational as well as pedagogical and transgressive.

Consequently, there is no such thing as a critical literacy text. Rather there are texts through which we may better be able to create spaces for critical literacies. The world as text, however, can be read from a critical literacy perspective, especially given that what constitutes a text has changed. For instance, a classroom can be read as a text, and water bottles can also be read as text (Janks, 2014 ). What this means is that issues and topics of interest that capture learners’ interests, based on their experiences, or artifacts with which they engage in the material world, as they participate in communities around them, can and should be used as text to build a curriculum that has significance in their lives.

Key Aspects of Critical Literacy

In spite of the fact that critical literacy does not have a set definition or a normative history, the following key aspects have been described in the literature. It should be noted that such key aspects or tenets would likely take different shape depending on one’s orientation to critical literacy.

Critical literacy should not be a topic to be covered or a unit to be studied. Instead it should be looked on as a lens, frame, or perspective for teaching throughout the day, across the curriculum, and perhaps beyond. What this means is that critical literacy involves having a critical perspective or way of being.

While working across the curriculum, in the content areas, diverse students’ cultural knowledge (drawn from inside the classroom and the children’s everyday worlds, homes, and communities), their funds of knowledge (Gonzales, Moll, & Amanti, 2006 ), and multimodal and multilingual practices (Lau, 2012 ) should be used to build curriculum. Because students learn best when what they are learning has importance in their lives, using the topics, issues, and questions that they raise should therefore be an important part of creating the classroom curriculum.

From a critical literacy perspective the world is seen as a socially constructed text that can be read. The earlier students are introduced to this idea, the sooner they are able to understand what it means to be researchers of language, image, spaces, and objects, exploring such issues as what counts as language, whose language counts, and who decides as well as explore ways texts can be revised, rewritten, or reconstructed to shift or reframe the message(s) conveyed. As such, texts are never neutral. What this means is that all texts are created from a particular perspective with the intention of conveying particular messages. As such these texts work to position readers in certain ways. We therefore need to question the perspective of others.

Texts are socially constructed and created or designed from particular perspectives. As such, they work to have us think about and believe certain things in specific ways. Just as texts are never neutral, the ways we read text are also never neutral. Each time we read, write, or create, we draw from our past experiences and understanding about how the world works. We therefore should also analyze our own readings of text and unpack the position(s) from which we engage in literacy work.

Critical literacy involves making sense of the sociopolitical systems through which we live our lives and questioning these systems. This means our work in critical literacy needs to focus on social issues, such as race, class, gender, or disability and the ways in which we use language to shape our understanding of these issues. The discourses we use to take up such issues work to shape how people are able to—or not able to—live their lives in more or less powerful ways as well as determine such ways of being as who is given more or less powerful roles in society.

Critical literacy practices can be transformative and contribute to change inequitable ways of being and problematic social practices. As such, students who engage in critical literacy from a young age are likely going to be better able to contribute to a more equitably and socially just world by being better able to make informed decisions regarding such issues as power and control, practice democratic citizenship, and develop an ability to think and act ethically.

Text design and production are essential to critical literacy work. These practices can provide opportunities for transformation. Text design and production refer to the creation or construction of multimodal texts and the decisions that are part of that process. This includes the notion that it is not sufficient to simply create texts for the sake of “practicing a skill.” If students are to create texts they ought to be able to let those texts do the work intended. For instance, if students are writing surveys or creating petitions, they should be done with real-life intent for the purpose of dealing with a real issue. If students write petitions, they should be able to send them to whomever they were intended.

Finally, critical literacy is about imagining thoughtful ways of thinking about reconstructing and redesigning texts, images, and practices to convey different and more socially just and equitable messages and ways of being that have real-life effects and real-world impact. For instance critically reading a bottle of water as a text to be read could result in examining the practice of drinking bottled water and changing that practice in support of creating a more sustainable world.

New Directions

New directions in the field of critical literacy include finding new ways to engage with multimodalities and new technologies (Comber, 2016 ; Janks & Vasquez, 2010 ; Nixon, 2003 ; Nixon & Comber, 2005 ; Larson & Marsh, 2015 ), engaging with spatiality, time, and space (Dixon, 2004 ), place-based pedagogies (Comber, 2016 ; Comber & Nixon, 2014 ), working across the curriculum in the content areas (Comber & Nixon, 2014 ; Janks, 2014 ; Vasquez, 2017 ), and working with multilingual learners (Lau, 2012 , 2016 ). These new directions for critical literacy, amongst others that may develop, reiterate and remind us of what educators who have been working in the field of critical literacy for some time have maintained (Comber, 2016 ; Janks, 2014 ; Luke, 2014 ; Vasquez, 2014b )—that there is no correct or universal model of critical literacy. Instead “how educators deploy the tools, attitudes, and philosophies is utterly contingent … upon students’ and teachers’ everyday relations of power, their lived problems and struggles” (Luke, 2014 , p. 29) and the ways in which teachers are able to navigate the (P)politics of the places and spaces in which their work unfolds. Janks insists that critical literacy is essential to the ongoing project of education across the curriculum (Janks, 2014 ). She notes,

in a perfect world in which social differences did not determine who gets access to resources and opportunity, we would still need critical literacy to help us read the texts that construct the politics of everyday life. In the actual world—where a 17-year-old boy sells one of his kidneys for an iPad; … where millions of people lack access to drinking water or sanitation—the list is endless—it is even more important that education enables young people to read both the word and the world critically. (Janks, 2010 , p. 349)

as one way to engage learners in powerful and pleasurable literacies that could contribute to creating a more critically informed and just world.

Charles Wilkes

Assistant Professor

Selected Academic Conference Presentations

Wilkes II, C. E. , (2023, April 13 – 16) Ordinary Brilliance: Understanding Black Learners Conceptions of Smartness as Pushing Back Against Anti-Blackness [Symposium]. AERA Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.

Hernandez, G., Wilkes II, C. E. (2023, April 13 – 16) What Does it Mean to be Smart in Mathematics at Community Colleges: An Investigation of the Culture of Mathematics Classrooms in Community Colleges from Students’ Perspectives [Paper]. AERA Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.

Wilkes, C. , Reinholz, D. (2022, February 24 -26) Characterizing Community College Instruction in Response to State-Mandated Policy and a Global Pandemic [Poster] RUME Annual Meeting Boston, MA

Wilkes, C. , Pilgrim, M. (2022, August 6) Adapting Professional Development to Meet the Needs of Two-Year College Instructors [Presentation] MathFest Philadelphia, PA

Alexander, N. N., Wilkes, C. & Berry, R. Q. (2020, Apr 17 – 21) A Synthesis of National Data on Black Secondary Mathematics Teachers [Symposium]. AERA Annual Meeting San Francisco, CA http://tinyurl.com/se26st3 (Conference Canceled)

Ball, D. L., DeFino, R., Hickman, L., Mann, L., Robinson, D. D., Willis, A. & Wilkes, C. (2020, Apr 17 – 21) Designing Teacher Education to Disrupt the Reproduction of Oppression in Practice [Structured Poster Session]. AERA Annual Meeting San Francisco, CA http://tinyurl.com/y2gq78ag (Conference Canceled)

Robinson, D., Wilkes, C. (2019, April) Student accusations and conventions: Understanding how students respond to changes in common classroom activities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, CA.

Gadd, R., Wilkes II, C.E. (2018, April) How do we teach it? Transforming practice into curriculum for practice-based teacher education. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.

Wilkes, C. (2018, April) Teacher-student relationships: How to build them through content. Poster presented at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Research Conference, Washington, DC.

Invited Talks

Wilkes II, C. (2023, January) Understanding EQUIP as a Tool and Professional Development for Math Faculty at a Two-Year College . The Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM), Boston, MA.

Wilkes II, C. (2023 March) Reimagining Smartness: More Verb Than Noun , NCTM 2023 Virtual Conference [virtual].

Pilgrim, M. E., & Wilkes II, C. (2022, March).  Disrupting unproductive narratives in mathematics education through teacher beliefs and practice . The Curtis Center’s 15th Annual Math and Teaching Conference [virtual].

Making Connections: Smartness, AntiBlackness, and Institutional Change, University of California, Berkley, March 17, 2022.

Unpacking Signaling Messages and Methods Through Teacher Practice in the Context of Critical Moments, Cal Poly Pomona, March 23, 2022.

Unpacking Signaling Messages and Methods Through Teacher Practice in the Context of Critical Moments, Virginia Commonwealth University, April 1, 2022.

Equity Through the Lens of Building One-one-One Relationships with Students Through Content and Redefining Smartness During Mathematics Instruction. California Mathematics Project at Cal Poly Pomona PD Summer Institute, June 8, 2022

Selected Research Experience

2022 - Model for Sustainable Ambitious Mathematics Program in High-Needs Settings (MSAMP)

MSAMP is an NSF grants that focuses on creating a model centered on demands and resources based on a successful and sustainable ambitious mathematics program at a unique school. The Principal Investigators (PIs) on the project are Jeffrey Choppin, Bill Zahner, Cindy Callard, and Shaun Nelms. The purpose of the project is 1) Create a model based on the selected school site centered around a demands and resources framework 2) Get feedback on the model created and 3) Test the model developed at school sites in San Diego. My role on the project includes co-leading data collection and analysis for the case studies in San Diego, mentoring and supporting graduate students, and working on sub-projects that include writing about aspects of the mode and findings from the project.

2021 - Mathematics Persistence in Inquiry and Equity (MPIE)

MPIE is an NSF grant that focuses on the impacts of California Assembly Bill 705 (AB705) on a local community college. The Principals Investigators (PIs) on the project from San Diego State University are Mary Pilgrim, Bill Zahner, and Dan Reinholz. The purpose of the project is to 1) study the impacts of AB705 2) develop professional development with a focus on inquiry and equity, and 3) create a PD model that is sustainable and replicable. My role on the project comprises, co-developing professional development, co- facilitating professional development, presenting research, publishing research, and leading sub-projects.

2013 – 2021 TeachingWorks

TeachingWorks is an organization housed at the University of Michigan whose research and development efforts focus on ensuring that all students have skillful teachers who are committed to and able to support their growth through a focus on the improvement of teacher preparation. (www.teachingworks.org)

2015 – 2016 Assessing Novices’ Skills in Leading Mathematics Discussions

The research project used a decomposition of the practice of leading a discussion and a standardized classroom-based assessment for assessing novices’ skills. Analyses focused on the degree to which the assessment elicited and revealed variation in novices’ skill, provided fine-grained details about individuals’ skills, accounted for classroom norms, and corresponded with performances in discussions led as a part of regular classroom practice. Participation included data analysis and writing.

2014 – 2016 Building Assessments of Teacher Candidate’s Teaching Practice

The purpose of this project was to build and pilot assessments that measured beginning teachers’ skill to lead a classroom discussion and the practice of making content explicit through modeling. This work included collecting data and refining the assessment tools developed.

2013 – ongoing TeachingWorks Mathematics Team Research Group (T.W.M.T.R.G.), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

The TeachingWorks Mathematics Team Research Group works to support the research of individual members through providing space to share and receive feedback on current research projects.

2013 – 2020 Elementary Mathematics Laboratory (EML)

The Elementary Mathematics Laboratory is a project that brings together the study and development of teaching practice with the teaching and learning of students and teaching professionals.

2017 – 2019 Specialized Content Knowledge (SCK) Project

The project focuses on identifying SCK as a construct through developing and piloting items that measure specialized content knowledge. The items developed were piloted on mathematicians, expert teachers, novice teachers, and lay persons. My role in the project comprised interviewing participants and analyzing data.

2017 – 2020 Advancing Critical Consciousness, Methods & Equity (AC2ME) Lab

This lab is lead by Matthew Diemer focused on projects connected to critical consciousness and equity more broadly leveraging statistical methods which included, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), Psychometrics, Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis among other methods.

Professional Experience

2020 – 2021 Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS) Professional Development

TeachingWorks had a partnership with Grand Rapids School District to support their instructional practices. In this work I worked with elementary, middle school, and high school math teachers, as well as co-facilitated a summer institute for math teachers in GRPS. I specifically coached three teachers, two middle school and one high school using Pam Harris materials around building numeracy for secondary mathematics.

2018 – 2020 Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Professional Development

TeachingWorks had a partnership with MCPS to support them in their instructional practices. We would meet with schools as a group to lead professional development, then provide coaching to teachers in individual buildings. I worked with three teachers in one school using a lesson study approach. Specifically, I met with the teachers in-between meeting in person to discuss their lessons that were implemented and provide feedback for approaches and practices that we discussed forming a small professional learning community.

Teaching Experience

Winter 2021 EDUC 415: Children as Sense-Makers Winter

2018 EDUC 415: Children as Sense-Makers Winter

2017 EDUC 415: Children as Sense-Makers Winter

2016 EDUC 415: Children as Sense-Makers

Fall 2015 EDUC 411: Teaching Children Mathematics

Ongoing Equity Efforts

2022 Park City Math Institute (PCMI) Workshop on Rehumanizing Mathematics Education (WRM)

The workshop on Rehumanzing Mathematics is led by Rochelle Gutiérrez. During the workshop we learn about the framework she developed and create a project that we will implement after the workshop. The workshops examine each dimension of the framework and brings together different individuals from different racial, gender, nationalities, and positions connected to mathematics education.

2020 – Individual Education Plan (IEP) Simulations

I have been a facilitator for several IEP Simulations for pre-service teachers. Pre-service teachers seldomly get explicit experience with participating in IEP meetings during teacher education programs. My colleague Ebony Perouse-Harvey designed simulations that draw upon race, gender, and disability studies. The simulations include pre-service teachers who act as teachers of subject content. A black woman who is the mother of a black daughter that is experiencing inequity. My role as the facilitator is to record, take notes, intervene if pre-service teachers verbally harm the parent, and debrief with the parent.

2014 – 2017 Race and Educational Inequality Professional Development Seminar (REIPDS)

In this seminar we had guest speakers, readings, and workshops that centered on race and educational inequality broadly and attended to research and practice specifically.

Spencer Review Panelist (2024)

Member of National Council for Research (NCTM) Research Committee (2023 – 2026)

Member of the Equity Pedagogies Working Group (EPWG) of the Committee on the Teaching of Undergraduate Mathematics (CTUM). (2021 – 2022)

NSF Review Panelist (2023 – )

TeachingWorks Organization Culture Taskforce (2018)

Education Diversity Advisory Committee (EDAC) (2015-2017)

Journal and Conference Reviewer

PMENA

NSF Review Panelist (2x) (2024)

Spencer Reviewer (2024)

NSF Review Panelist (2x) (2023)

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Supplement to Critical Thinking

This supplement elaborates on the history of the articulation, promotion and adoption of critical thinking as an educational goal.

John Dewey (1910: 74, 82) introduced the term ‘critical thinking’ as the name of an educational goal, which he identified with a scientific attitude of mind. More commonly, he called the goal ‘reflective thought’, ‘reflective thinking’, ‘reflection’, or just ‘thought’ or ‘thinking’. He describes his book as written for two purposes. The first was to help people to appreciate the kinship of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry to the scientific attitude. The second was to help people to consider how recognizing this kinship in educational practice “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (iii). He notes that the ideas in the book obtained concreteness in the Laboratory School in Chicago.

Dewey’s ideas were put into practice by some of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study in the 1930s sponsored by the Progressive Education Association in the United States. For this study, 300 colleges agreed to consider for admission graduates of 30 selected secondary schools or school systems from around the country who experimented with the content and methods of teaching, even if the graduates had not completed the then-prescribed secondary school curriculum. One purpose of the study was to discover through exploration and experimentation how secondary schools in the United States could serve youth more effectively (Aikin 1942). Each experimental school was free to change the curriculum as it saw fit, but the schools agreed that teaching methods and the life of the school should conform to the idea (previously advocated by Dewey) that people develop through doing things that are meaningful to them, and that the main purpose of the secondary school was to lead young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18). In particular, school officials believed that young people in a democracy should develop the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems (Aikin 1942: 81). Students’ work in the classroom thus consisted more often of a problem to be solved than a lesson to be learned. Especially in mathematics and science, the schools made a point of giving students experience in clear, logical thinking as they solved problems. The report of one experimental school, the University School of Ohio State University, articulated this goal of improving students’ thinking:

Critical or reflective thinking originates with the sensing of a problem. It is a quality of thought operating in an effort to solve the problem and to reach a tentative conclusion which is supported by all available data. It is really a process of problem solving requiring the use of creative insight, intellectual honesty, and sound judgment. It is the basis of the method of scientific inquiry. The success of democracy depends to a large extent on the disposition and ability of citizens to think critically and reflectively about the problems which must of necessity confront them, and to improve the quality of their thinking is one of the major goals of education. (Commission on the Relation of School and College of the Progressive Education Association 1943: 745–746)

The Eight-Year Study had an evaluation staff, which developed, in consultation with the schools, tests to measure aspects of student progress that fell outside the focus of the traditional curriculum. The evaluation staff classified many of the schools’ stated objectives under the generic heading “clear thinking” or “critical thinking” (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942: 35–36). To develop tests of achievement of this broad goal, they distinguished five overlapping aspects of it: ability to interpret data, abilities associated with an understanding of the nature of proof, and the abilities to apply principles of science, of social studies and of logical reasoning. The Eight-Year Study also had a college staff, directed by a committee of college administrators, whose task was to determine how well the experimental schools had prepared their graduates for college. The college staff compared the performance of 1,475 college students from the experimental schools with an equal number of graduates from conventional schools, matched in pairs by sex, age, race, scholastic aptitude scores, home and community background, interests, and probable future. They concluded that, on 18 measures of student success, the graduates of the experimental schools did a somewhat better job than the comparison group. The graduates from the six most traditional of the experimental schools showed no large or consistent differences. The graduates from the six most experimental schools, on the other hand, had much greater differences in their favour. The graduates of the two most experimental schools, the college staff reported:

… surpassed their comparison groups by wide margins in academic achievement, intellectual curiosity, scientific approach to problems, and interest in contemporary affairs. The differences in their favor were even greater in general resourcefulness, in enjoyment of reading, [in] participation in the arts, in winning non-academic honors, and in all aspects of college life except possibly participation in sports and social activities. (Aikin 1942: 114)

One of these schools was a private school with students from privileged families and the other the experimental section of a public school with students from non-privileged families. The college staff reported that the graduates of the two schools were indistinguishable from each other in terms of college success.

In 1933 Dewey issued an extensively rewritten edition of his How We Think (Dewey 1910), with the sub-title “A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process”. Although the restatement retains the basic structure and content of the original book, Dewey made a number of changes. He rewrote and simplified his logical analysis of the process of reflection, made his ideas clearer and more definite, replaced the terms ‘induction’ and ‘deduction’ by the phrases ‘control of data and evidence’ and ‘control of reasoning and concepts’, added more illustrations, rearranged chapters, and revised the parts on teaching to reflect changes in schools since 1910. In particular, he objected to one-sided practices of some “experimental” and “progressive” schools that allowed children freedom but gave them no guidance, citing as objectionable practices novelty and variety for their own sake, experiences and activities with real materials but of no educational significance, treating random and disconnected activity as if it were an experiment, failure to summarize net accomplishment at the end of an inquiry, non-educative projects, and treatment of the teacher as a negligible factor rather than as “the intellectual leader of a social group” (Dewey 1933: 273). Without explaining his reasons, Dewey eliminated the previous edition’s uses of the words ‘critical’ and ‘uncritical’, thus settling firmly on ‘reflection’ or ‘reflective thinking’ as the preferred term for his subject-matter. In the revised edition, the word ‘critical’ occurs only once, where Dewey writes that “a person may not be sufficiently critical about the ideas that occur to him” (1933: 16, italics in original); being critical is thus a component of reflection, not the whole of it. In contrast, the Eight-Year Study by the Progressive Education Association treated ‘critical thinking’ and ‘reflective thinking’ as synonyms.

In the same period, Dewey collaborated on a history of the Laboratory School in Chicago with two former teachers from the school (Mayhew & Edwards 1936). The history describes the school’s curriculum and organization, activities aimed at developing skills, parents’ involvement, and the habits of mind that the children acquired. A concluding chapter evaluates the school’s achievements, counting as a success its staging of the curriculum to correspond to the natural development of the growing child. In two appendices, the authors describe the evolution of Dewey’s principles of education and Dewey himself describes the theory of the Chicago experiment (Dewey 1936).

Glaser (1941) reports in his doctoral dissertation the method and results of an experiment in the development of critical thinking conducted in the fall of 1938. He defines critical thinking as Dewey defined reflective thinking:

Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Glaser 1941: 6; cf. Dewey 1910: 6; Dewey 1933: 9)

In the experiment, eight lesson units directed at improving critical thinking abilities were taught to four grade 12 high school classes, with pre-test and post-test of the students using the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Test and the Watson-Glaser Tests of Critical Thinking (developed in collaboration with Glaser’s dissertation sponsor, Goodwin Watson). The average gain in scores on these tests was greater to a statistically significant degree among the students who received the lessons in critical thinking than among the students in a control group of four grade 12 high school classes taking the usual curriculum in English. Glaser concludes:

The aspect of critical thinking which appears most susceptible to general improvement is the attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experience. An attitude of wanting evidence for beliefs is more subject to general transfer. Development of skill in applying the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, however, appears to be specifically related to, and in fact limited by, the acquisition of pertinent knowledge and facts concerning the problem or subject matter toward which the thinking is to be directed. (Glaser 1941: 175)

Retest scores and observable behaviour indicated that students in the intervention group retained their growth in ability to think critically for at least six months after the special instruction.

In 1948 a group of U.S. college examiners decided to develop taxonomies of educational objectives with a common vocabulary that they could use for communicating with each other about test items. The first of these taxonomies, for the cognitive domain, appeared in 1956 (Bloom et al. 1956), and included critical thinking objectives. It has become known as Bloom’s taxonomy. A second taxonomy, for the affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia 1964), and a third taxonomy, for the psychomotor domain (Simpson 1966–67), appeared later. Each of the taxonomies is hierarchical, with achievement of a higher educational objective alleged to require achievement of corresponding lower educational objectives.

Bloom’s taxonomy has six major categories. From lowest to highest, they are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Within each category, there are sub-categories, also arranged hierarchically from the educationally prior to the educationally posterior. The lowest category, though called ‘knowledge’, is confined to objectives of remembering information and being able to recall or recognize it, without much transformation beyond organizing it (Bloom et al. 1956: 28–29). The five higher categories are collectively termed “intellectual abilities and skills” (Bloom et al. 1956: 204). The term is simply another name for critical thinking abilities and skills:

Although information or knowledge is recognized as an important outcome of education, very few teachers would be satisfied to regard this as the primary or the sole outcome of instruction. What is needed is some evidence that the students can do something with their knowledge, that is, that they can apply the information to new situations and problems. It is also expected that students will acquire generalized techniques for dealing with new problems and new materials. Thus, it is expected that when the student encounters a new problem or situation, he will select an appropriate technique for attacking it and will bring to bear the necessary information, both facts and principles. This has been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others. In the taxonomy, we have used the term “intellectual abilities and skills”. (Bloom et al. 1956: 38)

Comprehension and application objectives, as their names imply, involve understanding and applying information. Critical thinking abilities and skills show up in the three highest categories of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The condensed version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956: 201–207) gives the following examples of objectives at these levels:

analysis objectives : ability to recognize unstated assumptions, ability to check the consistency of hypotheses with given information and assumptions, ability to recognize the general techniques used in advertising, propaganda and other persuasive materials
synthesis objectives : organizing ideas and statements in writing, ability to propose ways of testing a hypothesis, ability to formulate and modify hypotheses
evaluation objectives : ability to indicate logical fallacies, comparison of major theories about particular cultures

The analysis, synthesis and evaluation objectives in Bloom’s taxonomy collectively came to be called the “higher-order thinking skills” (Tankersley 2005: chap. 5). Although the analysis-synthesis-evaluation sequence mimics phases in Dewey’s (1933) logical analysis of the reflective thinking process, it has not generally been adopted as a model of a critical thinking process. While commending the inspirational value of its ratio of five categories of thinking objectives to one category of recall objectives, Ennis (1981b) points out that the categories lack criteria applicable across topics and domains. For example, analysis in chemistry is so different from analysis in literature that there is not much point in teaching analysis as a general type of thinking. Further, the postulated hierarchy seems questionable at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. For example, ability to indicate logical fallacies hardly seems more complex than the ability to organize statements and ideas in writing.

A revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) distinguishes the intended cognitive process in an educational objective (such as being able to recall, to compare or to check) from the objective’s informational content (“knowledge”), which may be factual, conceptual, procedural, or metacognitive. The result is a so-called “Taxonomy Table” with four rows for the kinds of informational content and six columns for the six main types of cognitive process. The authors name the types of cognitive process by verbs, to indicate their status as mental activities. They change the name of the ‘comprehension’ category to ‘understand’ and of the ‘synthesis’ category to ’create’, and switch the order of synthesis and evaluation. The result is a list of six main types of cognitive process aimed at by teachers: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The authors retain the idea of a hierarchy of increasing complexity, but acknowledge some overlap, for example between understanding and applying. And they retain the idea that critical thinking and problem solving cut across the more complex cognitive processes. The terms ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’, they write:

are widely used and tend to become touchstones of curriculum emphasis. Both generally include a variety of activities that might be classified in disparate cells of the Taxonomy Table. That is, in any given instance, objectives that involve problem solving and critical thinking most likely call for cognitive processes in several categories on the process dimension. For example, to think critically about an issue probably involves some Conceptual knowledge to Analyze the issue. Then, one can Evaluate different perspectives in terms of the criteria and, perhaps, Create a novel, yet defensible perspective on this issue. (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270; italics in original)

In the revised taxonomy, only a few sub-categories, such as inferring, have enough commonality to be treated as a distinct critical thinking ability that could be taught and assessed as a general ability.

A landmark contribution to philosophical scholarship on the concept of critical thinking was a 1962 article in the Harvard Educational Review by Robert H. Ennis, with the title “A concept of critical thinking: A proposed basis for research in the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability” (Ennis 1962). Ennis took as his starting-point a conception of critical thinking put forward by B. Othanel Smith:

We shall consider thinking in terms of the operations involved in the examination of statements which we, or others, may believe. A speaker declares, for example, that “Freedom means that the decisions in America’s productive effort are made not in the minds of a bureaucracy but in the free market”. Now if we set about to find out what this statement means and to determine whether to accept or reject it, we would be engaged in thinking which, for lack of a better term, we shall call critical thinking. If one wishes to say that this is only a form of problem-solving in which the purpose is to decide whether or not what is said is dependable, we shall not object. But for our purposes we choose to call it critical thinking. (Smith 1953: 130)

Adding a normative component to this conception, Ennis defined critical thinking as “the correct assessing of statements” (Ennis 1962: 83). On the basis of this definition, he distinguished 12 “aspects” of critical thinking corresponding to types or aspects of statements, such as judging whether an observation statement is reliable and grasping the meaning of a statement. He noted that he did not include judging value statements. Cutting across the 12 aspects, he distinguished three dimensions of critical thinking: logical (judging relationships between meanings of words and statements), criterial (knowledge of the criteria for judging statements), and pragmatic (the impression of the background purpose). For each aspect, Ennis described the applicable dimensions, including criteria. He proposed the resulting construct as a basis for developing specifications for critical thinking tests and for research on instructional methods and levels.

In the 1970s and 1980s there was an upsurge of attention to the development of thinking skills. The annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform has attracted since its start in 1980 tens of thousands of educators from all levels. In 1983 the College Entrance Examination Board proclaimed reasoning as one of six basic academic competencies needed by college students (College Board 1983). Departments of education in the United States and around the world began to include thinking objectives in their curriculum guidelines for school subjects. For example, Ontario’s social sciences and humanities curriculum guideline for secondary schools requires “the use of critical and creative thinking skills and/or processes” as a goal of instruction and assessment in each subject and course (Ontario Ministry of Education 2013: 30). The document describes critical thinking as follows:

Critical thinking is the process of thinking about ideas or situations in order to understand them fully, identify their implications, make a judgement, and/or guide decision making. Critical thinking includes skills such as questioning, predicting, analysing, synthesizing, examining opinions, identifying values and issues, detecting bias, and distinguishing between alternatives. Students who are taught these skills become critical thinkers who can move beyond superficial conclusions to a deeper understanding of the issues they are examining. They are able to engage in an inquiry process in which they explore complex and multifaceted issues, and questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers (Ontario Ministry of Education 2013: 46).

Sweden makes schools responsible for ensuring that each pupil who completes compulsory school “can make use of critical thinking and independently formulate standpoints based on knowledge and ethical considerations” (Skolverket 2018: 12). Subject syllabi incorporate this requirement, and items testing critical thinking skills appear on national tests that are a required step toward university admission. For example, the core content of biology, physics and chemistry in years 7-9 includes critical examination of sources of information and arguments encountered by pupils in different sources and social discussions related to these sciences, in both digital and other media. (Skolverket 2018: 170, 181, 192). Correspondingly, in year 9 the national tests require using knowledge of biology, physics or chemistry “to investigate information, communicate and come to a decision on issues concerning health, energy, technology, the environment, use of natural resources and ecological sustainability” (see the message from the School Board ). Other jurisdictions similarly embed critical thinking objectives in curriculum guidelines.

At the college level, a new wave of introductory logic textbooks, pioneered by Kahane (1971), applied the tools of logic to contemporary social and political issues. Popular contemporary textbooks of this sort include those by Bailin and Battersby (2016b), Boardman, Cavender and Kahane (2018), Browne and Keeley (2018), Groarke and Tindale (2012), and Moore and Parker (2020). In their wake, colleges and universities in North America transformed their introductory logic course into a general education service course with a title like ‘critical thinking’ or ‘reasoning’. In 1980, the trustees of California’s state university and colleges approved as a general education requirement a course in critical thinking, described as follows:

Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful conclusion of instruction in critical thinking should be the ability to distinguish fact from judgment, belief from knowledge, and skills in elementary inductive and deductive processes, including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought. (Dumke 1980)

Since December 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions at the three annual divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association. In December 1987, the Committee on Pre-College Philosophy of the American Philosophical Association invited Peter Facione to make a systematic inquiry into the current state of critical thinking and critical thinking assessment. Facione assembled a group of 46 other academic philosophers and psychologists to participate in a multi-round Delphi process, whose product was entitled Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction (Facione 1990a). The statement listed abilities and dispositions that should be the goals of a lower-level undergraduate course in critical thinking. Researchers in nine European countries determined which of these skills and dispositions employers expect of university graduates (Dominguez 2018 a), compared those expectations to critical thinking educational practices in post-secondary educational institutions (Dominguez 2018b), developed a course on critical thinking education for university teachers (Dominguez 2018c) and proposed in response to identified gaps between expectations and practices an “educational protocol” that post-secondary educational institutions in Europe could use to develop critical thinking (Elen et al. 2019).

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Dr. Alexandra Panos Receives the USF Outstanding Research Achievement Award

Tyler Ennis, MS
October 1, 2024

College of Education News , Research

Dr. Alexandra Panos , an assistant professor of literacy studies at the USF College of Education, has been awarded the USF Outstanding Research Achievement Award for her contributions to the field of literacy, addressing transdisciplinary challenges such as climate change, school equity, and placemaking. Out of the 27 faculty members selected for this honor, Panos was one of only two assistant professors to win, a testament to her talent, dedication, and the impact of her work. Panos' research agenda centers on providing learners with opportunities to explore texts related to the climate crisis. It also examines the interplay between teachers' and children's connections to place, the environment, and educational policy, and how these factors influence the conception and implementation of literacy teaching for addressing climate issues. In 2023, her contributions to this agenda resulted in the publication of four high-impact, peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters, three invited presentations, one international presentation, seven national presentations, and participation in one state conference. Her 2023 publications feature journal articles in the American Educational Research Journal , Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy , and Climate Literacy in Education , including co-authorship with community partners and practicing educators. These works highlight her influence extending beyond educational research circles, reaching literacy scholars and educators alike. She has also contributed to one of the most esteemed book publishers, Routledge, which featured her chapters on teaching climate change and fostering critical equity literacies. Additionally, Panos' outstanding contributions have earned her a competitive 2023 Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant . This funding will aid her research on climate literacy instruction for English language arts educators in Florida. Over the course of a year, the study will unite K-12 ELA educators from Florida, engaging them in innovative and professional reading, writing, and inquiry-based ecojustice education, all tailored to their specific goals and teaching environments. She serves as the study's principal investigator, with two USF colleagues as Co-PIs. In a related mixed methods study funded by a USF New Research Grant, Panos utilized surveys and interviews to examine how Florida ELA teachers address climate change in their classrooms. Panos' influence extends far beyond her research and teaching roles. She actively serves on the board of the local branch of the Friends of the National Wildlife Refuge , where she spearheads educational outreach initiatives for urban centers in the Tampa Bay region and regularly works at a local Tampa Housing Authority community center with elementary students alongside her PhD student Kristin Geren on placemaking literacies practices. Additionally, she is the inaugural research director for the Center for Climate Literacy at the University of Minnesota. In this role, she enhances visibility and fosters connections within a burgeoning empirical research community dedicated to literacy and the humanities in climate education. Speaking on the long-term impact of her research, Panos said, “I like to quote Octavia Butler who once wrote that ‘there is no end to what a living world demands of us.’ On the scale of the earth and its climate and ecosystems, impact seems a tough thing to describe. I do hope that the networks and relationships I seek to build in my scholarship might help to make visible how educators and children navigate socioecological crisis and ultimately to identify beneficial steps people might take to educate themselves and one another in service of our collective futures.” In a nomination letter for this award, Dr. Elizabeth Shaunessy-Dedrick , Chair of the LLEEP department and a professor in the Exceptional Student Education Program and coordinator of the Gifted Education Program, said, "Dr. Alexandra Panos' research in 2023 reflects an innovative, responsive, and nuanced approach to literacy scholarship as it relates intimately to the communities she serves. She takes a stance on issues often considered beyond the bounds of literacy research and forges a unique and prominent literacy scholarship pathway. The foundation for her nomination for this award is not only in the products and audiences she reaches, but also for the novel approach to literacy research she has undertaken. Engaging K-12 students, teachers, and the community in her research efforts, Dr. Panos has woven a rich tapestry of research in climate and ecojustice literacies, placemaking, and community engagement."

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PARI program delivers innovative solutions to address critical global development challenges

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — LASER PULSE , a program run by the Global Development & Innovation (GDI) division of the Purdue Applied Research Institute (PARI), continues to deliver a unique mechanism that enables the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to more effectively tap into novel, cutting-edge global development research happening in higher education.

The Long-term Assistance and Services for Research (LASER) Partners for University-Led Solutions Engine (PULSE) is a 10-year, $70 million PARI-led consortium that provides research-driven solutions in various development sectors across USAID partner countries. Awarded to Purdue University in 2018, LASER PULSE collaborates with USAID to identify research needs for critical development challenges, connect academics with local practitioners and manage the progress of funded research projects.

Founded in 2021 as part of Purdue’s Next Moves, PARI was created to sustain programs such as LASER PULSE and maximize the role the university and its researchers can play in addressing critical global challenges. Since its transfer to PARI in 2023, LASER PULSE has succeeded in reducing startup costs for development projects and increasing outreach efforts to USAID missions, bureaus and independent offices, garnering additional support and funding for research teams. So far, the program has 57 projects in 27 USAID partner countries ranging from $50,000 to $5.12 million, with five projects launching in just the last month alone.

“We are excited that PARI has been able to sustain the important work of LASER PULSE initiated by Purdue,” said John Glover, GDI executive director. “We look forward to continuing to engage our global network of researchers to solve these important global challenges.”

What makes LASER PULSE unique is its approach to building teams of academics and practitioners who collaboratively research a development challenge. LASER PULSE draws nearly 4,000 collaborators from more than 80 countries. Two-thirds of these collaborators hold traditional university researcher positions while the rest are practitioners, such as nongovernment organization directors, civil-society leaders or entrepreneurs. LASER PULSE intentionally brings together stakeholders from the outset to identify what new research is needed, and to what end, to solve a specific development challenge.

Through this model, research translation is an integral component across the entire research process, from forming the research team to producing and disseminating the results. In other words, there’s no research for research’s sake; all findings must be translated into a tangible product, such as a webinar, training manual or tool kit, that positively impacts a development challenge.

“We see policymakers eager to be a part of research translation from the outset, not just at the end when we as academics want to figure out how our findings can apply,” said Jennifer DeBoer, director of practice for education and youth at GDI and associate professor of engineering education at Purdue. “For example, we had a productive discussion with colleagues in the USAID Malawi mission, who jumped at the chance to be part of the LASER PULSE approach. They immediately said, ‘We need new research on the issue of lead exposure in schools.’ So there’s the translated research need for a development challenge, and that’s how our process kicks off.”

Several projects managed through the LASER PULSE mechanism have prompted notable program and policy changes:

A project on decentralized water resource circulation in Vietnam , led by researchers at Hanoi University of Science and Technology, contributed to the signing of a new law that addresses water recycling.
A team led by Gerald Shively , associate dean and director of International Programs in Agriculture at Purdue, helped to complete the first national nutrition research agenda in Laos to combat malnutrition.
Researchers from Alabama A&M University, University of Rwanda and University of Global Health Equity developed a training curriculum for dairy workers to improve the quality and safety of milk in Rwanda.

The LASER PULSE team makes a concerted effort to connect with its project teams. This summer, Technical Director Betty Bugusu and Program Director Suzi Cyr traveled to Laos and Vietnam to meet with missions and project teams, establishing connections and promoting the program’s capabilities in development research.

“By the time we departed Laos, we had already engaged in a follow-up conversation with a potential partner in Vietnam, thanks to a recommendation from a contact at the Laos mission,” Cyr said. “While not every discussion leads to new work, we are seeing a significant increase in requests from USAID, largely attributable to our comprehensive outreach efforts.”

LASER PULSE is constantly seeking to expand its network of researchers and practitioners. Those interested in joining should visit the program’s website to explore current projects and upcoming funding opportunities.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives .

Media contact: Lindsey Macdonald, [email protected]

Pulitzer Center Update October 1, 2024

University Students Explore the Reality of Environmental Degradation in Indonesia

Small-scale fishermen in the remote corners of Indonesia face various challenges, including Umar, who lives in Apara Village and relies on the sea for his livelihood. Recently, he has had to travel 8 kilometers to catch fish, whereas previously, he only needed to travel 1 kilometer.

Apara Village is on the border between Indonesia and Australia. Diesel fuel in his area is expensive, costing around IDR 25,000 per liter, which is twice the price on the island of Java. Amid this difficult situation, Umar’s catch has dwindled due to competition with large vessels from China and Russia. Umar admits that he frequently sees foreign and ex-foreign ships passing through the Arafura Sea. These ships are suspected of being illegal and entering the coastal waters near Apara Village. Umar finds it increasingly difficult to catch fish.

Umar’s story was shared by Abdus Somad , a Fellow in the Pulitzer Center's Ocean Reporting Network, who brought this rarely exposed reality to the attention of students and faculty at IPB University. The Green Voice Matters workshop was held through a collaboration between the Pulitzer Center and IPB University, focusing on uncovering the true stories of Indonesia's oceans and forests, which are currently facing degradation due to climate change and other anthropogenic issues.

Eighty students from IPB University, who are aspiring scientists of Indonesia, participated in the environmental journalism workshop Green Voice Matters (GVM). It was officially opened on August 22, 2024, by Intan Febriani, director of International Education and Outreach at the Pulitzer Center, alongside Professor Anuraga Jayanegra, director of Strategic Studies and Academic Reputation at IPB University. This collaboration continues the Pulitzer Center’s involvement at IPB, which began in 2023.

Pulitzer Center Journalists Speak on Ocean Issues, Palm Oil, and Extractive Industries

The event began with in-depth presentations by Pulitzer Center journalists paired with IPB University faculty members to provide students with diverse and fresh insights on particular issues organized into three deep dive sessions.

Participants, facilitators, and speakers of GVM IPB University 2024. Image courtesy of Dkasra IPB, Dramaga 2024.

The first session, led by Jaring.id journalist Abdus Somad, covered Indonesia’s maritime issues in the Arafura and Natuna seas, focusing on the plight of micro-fishing communities, illegal wildlife trade, illegal fishing, and related issues. Somad is a Fellow in the Pulitzer Center's Ocean Reporting Network. This presentation was followed by Akhmad Solihin, who explained the complexities of maritime governance from both international and national legal perspectives, highlighting the ongoing challenges in effectively managing maritime problems.

The second session focused on forestry issues, beginning with a report by Tempo journalist Riani Putri , who discussed forest degradation due to palm oil industry expansion into forested areas. She also pointed out efforts to categorize palm oil as a forest crop, which could lead to the "whitewashing" of ecological damage, threatening the future of Indonesia’s tropical forests.

Putri is a Fellow of Rainforest Reporting, a journalism grant program by the Pulitzer Center. Her presentation was complemented by Bayu Eka Yulian, who emphasized the destruction caused by unsustainable palm oil practices and the challenges of law enforcement in the forestry sector. He stressed the importance of mapping the actors involved, as well as the role of academia as a battleground for contesting paradigms. Discussions like this are crucial to providing students with fresh and critical perspectives.

In the final deep dive session, Tempo Deputy Editor-in-Chief Bagja Hidayat discussed the reality of Indonesia's nickel industry, which is not only environmentally destructive but also poses a threat to Indonesia's democracy. He emphasized that the media has a responsibility to uphold accurate information and act as the fourth pillar of democracy in Indonesia.

Professor Bambang Hero explained his witnesses in numerous environmental cases, particularly in the extractive mining industries, echoed these sentiments. Hero is also a frequent resource for investigative reporting on the losses caused by unsustainable extractive industries in Indonesia, which often involve corruption and other legal violations. He pointed out the many challenges in enforcing environmental laws, even within academia, which is often forced to compromise with business ambitions.

Community Dialogue

Pulitzer Center grantees and IPB academics answering student’s questions. Image courtesy of Dkasra IPB, Dramaga. 2024.

The GVM event at IPB University continued with a “community dialogue,” or rembukan warga session, which sparked enthusiastic participation from IPB students. In this interactive discussion, students asked the speakers numerous questions, covering topics such as the contribution of journalism in academia, the role of students in protecting Indonesia's environment, the journalistic skills necessary for future careers, maintaining objectivity and independence in writing opinions, and tips on staying safe while conducting risky research or reporting.

The session opened with an interlude—a student volunteer reciting the poem taken from Silent Spring —which added a reflective tone to the GVM Bogor activities. Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, is an important book for the discussion of sustainable development.

“The session inspired us to take action, particularly regarding the stories of deforestation. How could students monitor such cases from a distance to keep speaking out and making an impact?”

—Fawaz, IPB student

Faculty and researchers encouraged everyone to engage in self-reflection, as the facts and data reveal that deforestation continues to threaten Indonesia’s forests. They stressed that good environmental governance must be enforced, as it will provide long-term welfare benefits.

Op-Ed Skill Sharing by Bagja Hidayat

In the final activities, the GVM program at IPB University continued with a mini-coaching session on writing for the media, focusing on op-eds. The session began with Akhmad Solihin’s presentation on the techniques and structure of effective writing for mass media from an academic perspective. This was followed by Bagja Hidayat, a journalist who shared his experience in expanding the impact of written works such as opinion pieces, features, and others by understanding the target audience and the key messages to be conveyed.

A well-written piece, according to Hidayat, should cater to both those who are familiar with the topic and those who are not, making a balance in language style and content essential to attract and engage readers.

Op-ed skills session based on journalist and academic perspective. Image courtesy of Dkasra IPB. Indonesia, 2024.

The workshop aimed to provide insights and practical skills to help IPB University students communicate their scientific findings to the public, while also raising awareness about critical environmental issues in Indonesia.

Students exercise to create their op-ed/stories regarding the Indonesian ocean, forest, or environmental conditions in general based on the Pulitzer Center’s works. Image by Grenti Paramitha. Indonesia, 2024.

The Green Voice Matters in Bogor also featured the hi/lang photo exhibition. This exhibition, showcasing 56 photos and visual works by Pulitzer Center grantees, has attracted hundreds of visitors daily.

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