Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education

Educators and leaders urgently need scholarship that draws critical attention to educational inequities across the world. By foregrounding innovative research approaches, Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education focuses on understanding and counteracting existing inequities. This compelling book will be useful to all those who wish to be part of that effort. -- Rebecca Ropers-Huilman, University of Minnesota

Critical theory has much to teach us about higher education. By linking critical models, methods, and research tools with an advocacy-driven vision of the central challenges facing postsecondary researchers and staff, this book argues that, far from being overly abstract, critical tools and methods are central to contemporary scholarship.Critical theory has much to teach us about higher education. By linking critical models, methods, and research tools with an advocacy-driven vision of the central challenges facing postsecondary researchers and staff, Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education makes a significant-and long overdue-contribution to the development of the field. The contributors argue that, far from being overly abstract, critical tools and methods are central to contemporary scholarship and can have practical policy implications when brought to the study of higher education. They argue that critical research design and critical theories help scholars see beyond the normative models and frameworks that have long limited our understanding of students, faculty, institutions, the organization and governance of higher education, and the policies that shape the postsecondary arena. A rigorous and invaluable guide for researchers seeking innovative approaches to higher education and the morass of traditionally functionalist, rational, and neoliberal thinking that mars the field, this book is also essential for instructors who wish to incorporate the lessons of critical scholarship into their course development, curriculum, and pedagogy.