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 significantand long overduecontribution 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.
Introduction1. Critical Discourse Analysis in Higher Education Policy Research2. Sense and Sensibility: Considering the Dynamic between Scholarship andLived Experiences3. A Critical Approach to Power in Higher Education4. A Critical Reframing of Human Capital Theory in US Higher Education5. The Ideas and Craft of the Critical Historian of Education6. The State and Contest in Higher Education in the Globalized Era: CriticalPerspectives7. Critical Policy Analysis, the Craft of Qualitative Research, and Analysis ofData on the Texas Top 10% Law8. Critical Action Research on Race and Equity in Higher Education9. Using Critical Race Theory to (Re)Interpret Widely Studied Topics Relatedto Students in US Higher Education10. Whose Structure, Whose Function? (Feminist) Poststructural Approaches inHigher Education Policy Research 011. A Critical Examination of the College Completion Agenda: AdvancingEquity in Higher Education12. The New Stratification: Differentiating Opportunity by Race and Class atCommunity Colleges in the United States13. The Transformative Paradigm: Principles and Challenges
""This book is both comprehensive in nature and seminal in content.""
