Working with Critical Realism

Alpesh Maisuria is Associate Professor of Education Policy in Critical Education, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Through underlabouring Marxism, his work examines the ideological and political drivers of policy decisions to critique the role and function of education in (re)producing forms of inequality. He has an extensive publications record, including the Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education (Brill 2022). Alpesh is the Joint Deputy Editor of Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS) and is the co-convenor of the Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues (MERD) seminar series (see the Facebook group). He is also Academic Parliamentary Fellow for the House Commons Library in the UK Parliament, and the American Education Research Association (AERA) Marxian and Society SIG Programme Chair. Grant Banfield is Adjunct Lecturer, University of South Australia. He has been a teacher and university researcher/academic in Australian secondary schools and universities for over 40 years. His commitment throughout has been to the advancement of education as an emancipatory and revolutionary project. Grant’s research, writing, and scholarship centre on exploring the relationship between realist philosophy of science and Marxian social theory and the possibilities this brings for ethical and transformative praxis. He is the author of Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education (Routledge 2016).

• CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Journeys Through Critical Realism Alpesh Maisuria and Grant BanfieldCHAPTER 2 A Detective, Physicist and Historian Walk into a Bar: Abduction, Retroduction and Retrodiction in Critical Realist EvaluationsDidier Boost, Björn Blom & Peter Raeymaeckers CHAPTER 3 Bridging the Gap Between Philosophy and Empirical Research: A Critical Realist Methodology Using Quantitative MethodsCatherine HastingsCHAPTER 4 Parent Engagement in Student Learning: Using Critical Realism to Uncover the Generative Mechanisms Needed for Teachers to Embrace Parent Engagement in their Teaching PracticeCatherine QuinnCHAPTER 5 On the Anti-Imperialist Possibilities of Critical RealismOmar KaissiCHAPTER 6 Cobbling Together Methods for a Coherent Critical Realist Methodology: Searching for MechanismsBree WeizeneggerCHAPTER 7 A Critical Realist Perspective on the 'Quality and Reform Dance' in the Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) Sector: The Road Less TravelledDeborah JohnsonCHAPTER 8 The Utility of Critical Realism in Indigenous ResearchCassandra Diamond CHAPTER 9 The Spatiality of School Choice – A Critical Realist Quantitative Geography of Education?Anna-Maria Fjellman CHAPTER 10 Real Men, Real Violence: Critical Realism and the Search for the Masculine SubjectBen Wadham CHAPTER 11 The Critical Realist Toolkit Ellenah MackieCHAPTER 12 Journeys to Critical Realism: A Conversation about Spirituality, Love and Human EmancipationLoretta Geuenich, Celina Valente, and Grant Banfield CHAPTER 13 (A kind of) Conclusion – Against Full-Stops and Bookends? Alpesh Maisuria and Grant BanfieldINDEX