Critical Theory, Methods, and Design in Educational Research: Bearing Witness in Times of Deepening Inequalities

Two of the foremost educational researchers chronicle their 30-year collaboration across tumultuous shifts in educational studies, bearing witness to cumulative inequities in schools and urban communities.

Weis and Fine examine critical research designs with young people from elite, working class, and impoverished class fractions, as well as across racial and ethnic groups, including those experiencing structural dispossession and those enjoying privilege.

Curated to be useful to today’s students and future generations of scholars, the volume chronicles the sustained impacts of unjust state systems and dives into vibrant fissures in which the imagination flourishes and possibilities grow.

Chapters explore rich linkages of theory and methods; knotty questions of collaboration, partnership, and ethics; and designs that trace social relations over time and space. A newly developed introduction and conclusion bookend six previously published chapters, many coauthored with a range of colleagues, animating research studies with a broad range of young people and young adults navigating the uneven landscapes of education in urban America.

Book Features:

• Details linked to research methodologies, including multi-site longitudinal ethnography and longitudinal ethnographic interviews, as well as participatory action research that the authors, among others, have advanced in critical educational studies.
• Provides examples of educational research that interrogate inequities and document radical possibilities by race, class, gender, immigration status, and sexuality.
• Examines projects that have been designed alongside and by vibrant research teams from across schools, prisons, youth movements, and public and private educational P–16 plus settings.
• Interrogates how the authors evolved innovative research methods and ethics attentive to “studying up,” mapping, national youth-led surveys, participatory inquiry behind bars, and with middle school students.
• Offers educational designs that address inequities in STEM education and outcomes and the impact of state violence on young people; as well as methods for understanding structural arrangements, youth identities, and on-the-ground research for justice.

Lois Weis is State University of New York Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Michelle Fine is Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and founding faculty member of The Public Science Project. They are coauthors of Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-Imagining Schools; Speed Bumps: A Student Friendly Guide to Qualitative Research, and Construction Sites: Excavating Race, Class and Gender Among Urban Youth, all published by Teachers College Press, among other publications.