critical inquiry research

An Introduction to Critical Approaches

• First Online: 29 September 2022

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• Robert E. White   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8045-164X 3 &
• Karyn Cooper 4  

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As can be understood from the previous chapter, in qualitative research, words are used as data rather than numerical representations (Miles & Huberman, 1994). All qualitative methods rely on linguistic information rather than on statistical evidence. As such, they tend to employ meaning-based (as opposed to numerical-based) data analysis (Polkinghorne, 1983). Thus, qualitative research utilizes data in the form of text, which, in turn, serves to furnish a detailed analysis of a situation, a case, a subject or an event through original analysis (Creswell, 2013). In qualitative research, data is usually collected and analyzed on fewer participants and situations (Patton, 2014) than is commonly found in quantitative research practices. The previous chapter introduced a short history of qualitative research as it relates to quantitative research endeavours. The current chapter devotes itself to a discussion of a number of approaches to qualitative research, specifically the critical approach.

The reliance on personal experience is the main building block, the main distinction of qualitative research. Not so much feelings, not so much how do we feel about things, but what is the experience as felt, as told, as manifest in the things that we do. Robert Stake, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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Faculty of Education, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada

Robert E. White

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Transformative Potentials of Critical Educational Inquiry

Emma Simmons

The foundational questions to critical work are: Who/what is helped/privileged/legitimated? Who/what is harmed/oppressed/disqualified?

(Cannella & Lincoln, 2009, p. 54)

Critical inquiry has been criticized for creating illusions of justice and being unable to transform the situations of the oppressed. Critics have voiced concerns for the paradoxical nature of critical inquiry, arguing that by providing alternative understandings of social phenomena, critical inquirers send a message that the oppressed are partly responsible for their situations due to their lack of “ appropriate” knowledge. In this article, we discuss the transformative potentials of critical educational inquiry. We use five contexts of qualitative research, namely, autobiographical, historical, political, postmodern, and philosophical to explore the possibilities of critical inquiry in educational research. We also use an article by Deborah Hicks (2005) to exemplify how critical research may be transformative and empowering by involving the researched in a process of inquiry characterized by negotiation and reciprocity.

critical inquiry, educational research, contexts of qualitative research, empowerment

Introduction

Critical theory generally refers to the theoretical traditions developed by a number of scholars affiliated with the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in the mid-twentieth century. This group of scholars, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, situated this inquiry within German philosophical, social, and political thoughts and traditions. Very soon, the life and work of these scholars were heavily influenced by the devastation of World War I, along with resulting economic crises and political instability. They believed that reinterpretations of society were necessary, during an infamous period in history, when various forms of injustice and subjugation were shaping their world. Unfortunately, only a decade after the establishment of the Frankfurt School, the Nazis overtook Germany in body and mind. The leading scholars of the Frankfurt School decided (or were forced) to move to the United States. However, they were shocked by many aspects of American culture, especially the unquestioned acceptance of empirical practices of American social science research. In 1953, Horkheimer and Adorno decided to return to Germany in order to revitalize the Institute of Social Research, but Marcuse chose to stay in the United States and continue his work in social science research and theorization (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011).

All members of the Frankfurt School championed a vision of a more just society, in which people have not only an equal access to desirable things but also control over the economic, political and cultural aspects of their lives. They argued that the oppressed and exploited people would be emancipated only if they were empowered to transform their situations by themselves. This theoretical tradition is called “critical” because the promoters of this theory “saw the route to emancipation as being a kind of self-conscious critique which problematizes all social relations, in particular those of and within the discursive practices of power, especially technical rationalism” (Tripp, 1992, p. 13).

Although frequently referenced in social science literature, critical theory has also been misinterpreted, misunderstood and accused of being patriarchal and re-inscribing old power structures. For example, Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) famously questioned the ability of critical theory to empower the oppressed and transform their situations. To avoid confusion in our discussion, we conceptualize critical theory as a framework to understand “issues of power and justice and the ways that the economy; matters of race, class, and gender; ideologies; discourses; education; religion and other social institutions; and cultural dynamics interact to construct a social system” (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011, p. 288).

Because of its emancipatory nature, critical theory is different from traditional empiricist theories in three important ways (Schwandt, 2007). First, it is a self-reflective, democratic discourse in the sense that it relinquishes normative and accepted understandings of the social order and adopts a lens of critical reconsideration. Second, unlike the empiricist tradition in which the theorist is disinterested in and detached from the research subjects, critical inquiry is closely related to praxis [i.e., action + reflection = word = work = praxis] (for details, see Freire, 1970). Third, critical inquiry “employs the method of immanent critique, working from within categories of existing thought in order to radicalize those categories, reveal their internal contradictions and shortcomings, and demonstrate their unrecognized possibilities” (Schwandt, 2007, p. 55). Therefore, when research is carried out from the perspectives of critical theory, it aims to identify various forms of power and “seeks in its analyses to plumb the archaeology of taken-for-granted perspectives to understand how unjust and oppressive social conditions came to be reified as historical ‘givens’” (Cannella & Lincoln, 2009, p. 54).

The critical theory tradition has been taken into the field of education by a number of scholars, “but most notably by Paulo Freire in his work with oppressed minorities which gave rise to the term critical pedagogy , meaning teaching-learning from within the principles of critical theory” (Tripp, 1992, p. 13). Other scholars, such as Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Joe Kincheloe and Peter McLaren have taken up critical theory to unpack politics of education, epistemological violence, control of teachers and learners, commodification of knowledge, and how schools reproduce social, economic, political, and cultural inequalities. In addition to identifying these oppressive roles of education, they have also provided the language of possibility .

In this article, we explore critical inquiry through five contexts, namely, autobiographical, historical, political, postmodern, and philosophical. Karyn Cooper and Robert White (2012) propose these five contexts as “a theoretical framework for conducting, understanding, and interpreting qualitative research” (p. 23). Throughout our exploration, we use Deborah Hicks’ (2005) article “Cultural hauntings: Girlhood fictions from working-poor America” as an example of reflexive, advocacy-centred critical inquiry. In this article, Hicks delineates links between third and fourth-grade girls’ fascination with horror fiction, layered dimensions of their voice and identity, and the complexities of growing up in a predominantly white working-poor community. Using the five contexts of qualitative research (Cooper & White, 2012) as a theoretical framework with reference to Hicks (2005), as an example of critical inquiry, we present our analysis of and insights into the possibilities for and realities for empowerment in critical education research.

Autobiographical Context

One of the over-arching aims of critical inquiry is to include various perspectives in academia and to acknowledge that the stories and voices of particular groups have long been underrepresented in conversation of research. Critical inquiry has paved the way for, and continues to incorporate, the lenses of feminist theory, critical race theory and class analyses, among others, and ultimately seeks to challenge the canonical frames of academia that have allowed for only one reality. The autobiographical context provides a step forward in that challenge, and many practitioners of critical inquiry have used the autobiographical context both to inform their larger critiques and also to situate themselves within the larger discourse. Race and gender theorists such as Gloria Anzaldua (1987), bell hooks (1994), and Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997) weave their autobiographies throughout their critical analyses in order to establish the inextricability between their lived experience and their perspective regarding the world around them.

As described in Cooper and White (2012), the autobiographical context is a way to highlight the researcher’s own perspective in order to better establish a connection between researcher, researched and reader, as well as to contextualize the research produced. Without an autobiographical context, the researcher and, in fact, the research itself would be disembodied and without a human source. As a reader, one would be unable to understand both the insights and the blind spots that the researcher brings to an investigation without an understanding of the author’s preconceived ideologies and experiences: “To use a metaphor, viewing a work of art without contextualizing it in terms of our knowledge about the artist tends to limit our understanding of the painting itself” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 33). Before theorists in the latter half of the 20 th century began to call into question the positionalities within the academy, the autobiography of the researcher was hidden, leading to an inability to trust the work produced, and an “othering” of the subject.

Referencing William Pinar, Cooper and White (2012) highlight the use of autobiography in research, noting that it need not be a self-indulgent exercise. Pinar demonstrates, through his method of currere, that autobiography is a part of a larger context. His four steps allow researchers to incorporate their lived experiences into their larger research and, in fact, study themselves in order to ask and understand the question, “What do I make of what I have been made?” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 34). As critical inquiry attempts to inspire new ways of thinking, it simultaneously follows the steps that Pinar lays out—regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical. These steps give us the opportunity first to look back on our formative experiences, then forward to where we desire to go. The third step looks at our present, while being informed by our past and future and, fourth, we bring all three pieces together in order to understand our ways of understanding (Pinar, 1975).

Hicks’ (2005) relies heavily on the autobiographical context to perform her critical inquiry. Within her analysis, she interweaves her own autobiography, as well as those of her students. Hicks’ voice as the researcher and author is never lost within her writing; her choices, observations and interactions are always deeply embedded within her work. In fact, the writing/research process and the choices she has made within that are all reflective of her positionality, and she makes no secret of that. In so doing, she avoids the problem of the researcher’s gaze which, gone unmentioned, can affect the ways in which the reader sees the subjects of the research, ultimately skewing the reader’s response and, perhaps in turn, any action taken as a result of her research. As Cooper and White (2012) discuss, by being autobiographically expository, one ensures that both researcher and reader are using the same tools to understand and view the subjects of the research. By revealing our subjectivity, we actually allow more space for our reader to be objective.

In addition to being honest about her own autobiography, we would also argue that Hicks presents what functions almost as an autobiography of the community where she conducted her research. More than simply contextualizing her students’ narratives, the way in which she describes the setting of the classroom leads the reader to feel as if the place is in and of itself. She describes its position on the economic margins of the city by stating that the middle-class “might drive through on the way to something else, noting in passing the ghostly frames of abandoned warehouses or the thick, gray smoke churned out from one of the few working factories” (p. 172).

While this contextualization also has its place in discussions of both the historical and political context, it is raised here as well. Hicks regards the space that her subjects live in with her particular eye and mindset, and gives a specific meaning to both their autobiographies and the very act of contextualization. In doing so, Hicks provides her individual subjects with more of a universality, a way to posit that narrative need not be insular and without academic merit. The research question, as stated by Hicks, is “what was it like to grow up as a girl in contemporary working-poor America?” (p. 172). Thus, her focus on the economic and structural context of her subjects is vital to the larger underpinnings of her research, for which horror novels become merely a vehicle and not the point, in themselves.

The third modality in which we see the autobiographical context at play is, of course, in the narratives of the girls themselves. Hicks uses bell hooks (1994), Myles Horton (1990) and Paulo Freire (1970) as a framework, all three of whom centered both their pedagogies and their scholarship within a context of dialogue so the human aspect of each of the girls’ experiences is vital to the analysis that Hicks is attempting to construct. We learn about these girls through our understanding of their community and through their understandings of and interactions with the books that Hicks posits as “subversive” texts (p. 174). As Hicks describes their reactions to the texts, their previous experience with different genres and the choices that they make, we are able to understand the girls both as individuals, and within their larger contexts.

In Inquiry and Reflection, Diane Dubose Brunner (1994) talks about representations of student experience in various forms of media (pp. 153-186), a topic that is also tackled quite often by both bell hooks and Henry Giroux. By investigating how these girls read different texts, Hicks provides us a new reading of the girls themselves. Brunner talks about the way in which language has been used to describe students, especially along class lines, in television, film and literature, as well as the ways in which students, themselves, have been depicted as using (or conversely, failing to use) language. Hicks’ framing of her larger point of inquiry, the ways in which language and linguistic practices are both reflective and constructive of their material and cultural lives is an investigation into the very way that fictional depictions of youth in educational spaces disembodies them from their contexts, a process described by Brunner (1994). By focusing on the autobiography and narrative experience of herself, her students, and their teacher, Hicks is able to re-contextualize these experiences.

Historical Context

Moving through the five contexts of critical inquiry, we arrive at the historical context. Cooper and White (2012) open their discussion of the historical context with the African proverb, “Until the lion has his own historian, the hunter will always be the hero” (p. 52). This proverb is central to the ideas of a critical, historical analysis. Without questioning, “Whose history is it?” we are unable to look critically at the stories that we have taken as truth (p. 52). Denzin and Lincoln (2005) do just this by going through what they depict as the eight moments of qualitative research. They move from the traditional, through modernist, blurred genres, crisis of representation, and finally, the triple crisis. As they move through these moments, we see the history of qualitative research in varying complexities itself, as it is opened to new voices, new ways of knowing, seeing and understanding.

There are, of course, numerous scholars who aim to illustrate both a critical and historical understanding of their subjects. One such scholar, whose work seems of particular relevance to Hicks’ content and analysis, is David Roediger (1993). By developing a history of American racial construction through the paradigm of whiteness, Roediger takes both a critical and historical look at the ways in which our understanding of self, power, poverty and privilege are informed by the history of racial construction, as well as the history of labour in the United States. As Hicks discusses the working poor character of the town that her work is centered in, Roediger’s (1993) analysis of how labour history and the history of slavery becomes particularly critical to our understandings of the intersections of whiteness and working class identities, as posited by Hicks (2005).

Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995, 1999) also captures a historical context in her analyses of education and race, uniting the contexts of critical race theory and critical pedagogy. By tracing notions of racial segregation and looking at cultural deprivation, Ladson-Billings is able to reclaim the ways that we look at modern schooling and the ways that we talk about racial disparities in education. In so doing, the historical perspective in critical inquiry acts as a counter-argument to sometimes dangerous modes of thinking, such as the “deficit” model of education. Hicks continues this tradition by highlighting the voices of subjects schooled within a working class context, as well as by demonstrating positive examples of engaged learning.

Many of Hicks’ methodological and writing strategies demonstrate a strong connection to the historical context. Firstly, she contextualizes the geographic location based on historical understanding. She discusses its physical make-up, position within the larger urban space and, also, demographic profiles within a historical context. The critical inquiry piece here is that neighborhoods do not simply arise, just as residents are not divorced from their space—neighborhoods themselves do not exist separately from the forces that construct them (Hicks, 2005). She specifically mentions factors such as factory closings that occurred long before her students were born, largely as a means to highlight the ways in which communities live under the economic shadows of what came before. It is clear within a historical context that events do not just happen and dissipate; they continue to have an effect on what comes after them.

Hicks is also able to engage with the historical context by extending her study over a year-long period (She even goes so far as to refer to her data as a “history” (p. 173)). By looking at the girls over a period of time, she engages with notions of change. The other way in which she engages with the historical context is by situating her methodology and theoretical framework within a trajectory of study, wherein she cites the work of Gee (2004) and other practitioners of new literacy studies. In so doing, she draws a historical lens over her specific research, as well as engaging in a larger theoretical conversation.

Political Context

Within critical theory, it is impossible to create barriers between the political, postmodern, and philosophical contexts. Like the postmodern world we live in, they are liquid, and flow into each other at different times of the research and inquiry process. First and foremost, we currently live in the postmodern era and, thus, all contemporary research is firmly rooted within that particular framework. Secondly, if, as Pinar (1978) claims, all intellectual acts are inherently political, then any act of research by an individual or institution is, of course, political as well. Finally, thoughtful considerations of philosophy hold these concepts together and, through the philosophical context, dialogue and discourse are created to enable change. Nonetheless, the political aspect of critical theory is interwoven into all four contexts and must always be present in any research that aims to be called “critical.”

The Frankfurt School, notably Max Horkheimer, is central in exploring the political context of critical theory. Horkheimer (1972) states in his pivotal work, Critical Theory , that there cannot be many defined criteria for critical theory, as it is a product of its political, social, cultural, and economic contexts and is, thus, continually changing; however, he argues that critical theory must always contain the unfaltering “concern for the abolition of social injustice” (p. 242), a sentiment echoed by scholars such as Giroux (2004) and Lather (1986).

Lather (1986), in particular, argues that researchers should employ critical theory in order to avoid the “rape model” of research—namely, objectifying and “othering” one’s research subject. Critical theory can help researchers and institutions build and maintain “a more collaborative approach...to empower the researched, to build emancipatory theory, and to move toward the establishment of data credibility within praxis-oriented, advocacy research” (Lather, 1986, p. 272). Essentially, the goal of critical theory should be to encourage and facilitate emancipatory change for the oppressed, marginalized and misunderstood. For example, in her article, Hicks investigates—and eventually advocates for—the typically “hidden face of poverty” or the hidden “white” face of poverty. Intrigued and surprised by the “predominant Whiteness of the neighbourhood” (p. 171), where she situates her research, Hicks draws attention to an often overlooked area in urban poverty research.

The change called for in critical inquiry can be demonstrated through the realization of agency, which is central to the political context, and to critical inquiry as well: “the political contexts at work within society impact upon one’s sense of agency” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 72). In Hicks’ article, her goal (though flawed by her own middle-class biases and preconceptions of the working-poor) was to investigate the experience of girlhood in working-poor America, and how the school language practices—mainly reading novels—were “layered within their cultural and material lives” (p. 172). Though her research began with a more observational rather than advocacy focus, Hicks accomplished the praxis-oriented research that is often advocated by Lather (1986) and other critical researchers and theorists. When one student, Brandy, voiced her newfound confidence and proclaimed that “We can start to control this [their situation] by just sitting down and talking” (p. 184), she demonstrated that she had begun to realize her agency—the first step towards the change that critical theory champions.

The students in Hicks’ research also struggled with “juggling the tension and ambiguity of their class differences in a middle-class school culture” (p. 173). This is clearly evident in Hicks’ demonstration of her own middle-class cultural capital, when she attempts to begin the course with a text that the girls simply did not relate to, involving a cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1985) that rested outside of their realm of experience. Instead, the girls chose to focus on a type of text that was familiar to them: horror paperbacks. This shift in the types of literature that the students gravitated towards raises some critical questions: Are students in working-poor, urban neighbourhoods only capable of consuming simple, seemingly “low brow” texts? Should educators push those students beyond their comfortable reading environment into something more literary?

It is here that the true task of critical inquiry begins to take shape: “Literary” for whom, exactly? Why are these texts considered to be “low brow?” Why do we feel the need to teach certain accepted texts within the English classroom? While not specifically stating that these questions entered her research, Hicks displays in her article her engagement with these issues, as she questions her own cultural capital and decides to investigate, instead, the possibilities that lay within the horror paperbacks for unveiling the layered meanings of her students’ identities.

By taking this critical approach, Hicks’ grounds herself in the realm of critical pedagogy for political and social change—after reflecting on and altering her preconceptions of the cultural awareness and capital of her students, she provided them with a forum to be heard and to express their own cultural hauntings. Bauman (1997) claims that “the key to a problem as large as social justice lies in a problem as (ostensibly) small-scale as the primal moral act of taking up responsibility for the other nearby” (p. 70)—while Hicks may not have solved the issue of social justice, her research and willingness to speak and listen to these young girls illustrates her commitment to this group in working-poor America.

Postmodern Context

Critical theory argues that, in our postmodern society, normative assumptions and dominant perspectives of politics, culture and society often remain unquestioned. Horkheimer (1972) proposes that we re-evaluate our interactions and place within society a renewed consciousness that is “dominated at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life” (pp. 198-199). Of course, the critical researcher must question and define what is meant by “reasonable conditions of life;” the researcher must also focus on how that is attainable for each individual. For many theorists, the key lies in the search for individual and collective agency. For example, once the young girls in Hicks’ class developed and discovered their personal stories and voices, they were able to create a larger, collaborative agency that, potentially, could be heard outside of their small, working-poor neighbourhood classroom.

Central to the postmodern context is the move from a producer to a consumer society, and the power dynamics that occur as a result—a concept encountered by many critical theorists and researchers. Foucault (1982) claims that, for society to progress to a more equitable and open society, we are in desperate need of a “new economy of power relations” (p. 779). However, as Giroux (2004) notes, it is important to remember that, within our capitalist, postmodern society, power does not disappear but, rather, becomes reworked, replayed and restaged; perhaps that reworking of power can result from the turn from consumer to producer.

Bauman also voices his concern for our movement from a producer society to a consumer society and notes that, “if unchecked, [it] will spell dire consequences for humanity” (quoted in Cooper & White, 2012, p. 86). He further explains that the concept of choice, and the deceptively simple ability to choose, is yet another crucial component of our postmodern condition, rooted in the dichotomy of producer and consumer. Surrounded by menial daily choices of what espresso drink to purchase, television program to fit into our schedule or Twitter account to follow, it is clear that our postmodern society values choice. Bauman would argue, however, that these are quick, meaningless choices that require little to no responsibility once the choice has been made, but it is these choices that create and shape our identities, only to be “adopted and discarded like a change of costume” (1997, p. 88).

In Hicks’ article, her students began as consumers. They were drawn to the paperback horrors because of their distribution and saturation within the media, from television programs such as Goosebumps , as well as other film interpretations of the genre. However, once they began creating the same horror texts that they originally consumed and became producers, they found their voices and became individuals with their own sense of agency and the awareness of their autobiographical situation within their postmodern, political world.

Even so, Hicks’ students do not have the same choices as many of their middle-class counterparts. Our consumer-driven society emphasizes the constant need for choice, yet so many fail to have the privilege of choice. Indeed, the word “fail” might seem insensitive and severe but, in a consumer-driven society, members of the working-poor have neither the ability nor the means to choose and participate in material culture. In her article, Hicks observes that her students fail to meet the material standards of the dominant, middle-class culture and, therefore, their ability to live within the consumer, postmodern world is gone; there are no jobs left in their area and, so, the “material possibilities” have disappeared for the youth in this working-poor neighbourhood (p. 170). In addition to their attempted participation in the middle-class consumer culture, the young girls also continuously struggle with “juggling the tension and ambiguity of their class differences in a middle-class school culture” (p. 173). If material possibilities are valued in identity construction in a postmodern consumer society, then the students’ inability to obtain them means a negation of individuality and agency and, thus, the potential for collective action and change.

Philosophical Context

The girls in Hicks’ summer school reading group may have juggled tensions and struggled with expression, but they certainly took matters into their own hands when they decided to circulate horror paperbacks amongst themselves. Hicks’ article illustrates a difference between education and schooling, and these young girls in working-poor America used the horror paperbacks as a means of creating their own form of education. Postmodern critical philosopher Maxine Greene (1988) notes the philosophical differences between schooling and education, and argues that “Education...encourages individuals to grow and to become, while schooling constrains students to become servants of a technocratic society” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 106). This is particularly crucial to coming to an understanding of the dynamic nature of critical theory and, thus, critical pedagogy. Schooling, in Hicks’ situation, relied on a middle-class cultural capital that was not in the same sphere of experience as the education that the girls created for themselves, based on their interests and understandings. They began reading these texts as a self-created peer reading group and it was from this form of education, on the periphery of a middle-class school culture and environment, that the educator, Hicks, noticed the potential in exploring (and further complicating) the layered meanings of the girls’ identities.

Greene (1988) also states that imagination is central to developing one’s particular perspective and realizing one’s individual agency.

It takes imagination to become aware that a search is possible, and there are analogies here to the kind of learning we want to stimulate...it takes imagination on the part of the young people to perceive openings through which they can move. (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 110)

Greene’s (1988) emphasis on imagination paving the path to freedom is central to understanding the philosophical context of critical inquiry and also the philosophical context of Hick’s research. During a discussion of The Wizard of Oz, Hicks asked her students if, given the choice, they would choose to stay in Oz or go back to Kansas. One student, Shannon, imagines her escape from her current situation in a heartbreaking revelation:

I would choose Oz because it’s a beautiful land and up there you don’t hear no gunshots. And you don’t walk on glass and don’t hear people hollering and screaming at you like you do here. (Hicks, 2005, p. 183)

Shannon might not have made a plan of action for escaping her reality, but her imagination in this one instance displays her awareness of her political, social and economic situation, and her desire to escape. Picturing a better place—even one that is imaginary—could have been Shannon’s first step into plucking herself from her reality and escaping into a new one of change and autonomy (Greene, 1988).

Critics often blame critical inquiry for its emphasis on the language of critique, rather than the language of possibility. For example, Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) expresses her doubt in critical inquiry’s empowering and transformative powers. She argues that “the discourse of critical pedagogy is based on rationalist assumptions that give rise to repressive myths,” and critical pedagogues “perpetuate relations of domination in their classrooms” (p. 297). Like Ellsworth, Viviane Robinson (1992) argues that there is a paradox at the heart of critical inquiry’s endeavours for emancipation. When critical researchers offer alternative understandings of subjects’ situations, their offer has two “arrogant” claims:

a) subjects’ (mis)understandings are at least in part responsible for the situation they find unacceptable; and (b) the alternative understandings offered by the critical social scientist, if acted on, would result in outcomes that are more effective and fulfilling than those currently experienced. (p. 346)

Nonetheless, critical inquiry is, by its nature, self-critical, and critical theorists assert that, while these may be potential issues, true critical inquiry inherently addresses these problems. Rather than criticizing the nature of critical inquiry, Canella and Lincoln (2009) identify three issues that may marginalize and disempower critical inquiry, thus impacting its reception amongst academic and general populations. First, a high level of abstraction and use of difficult language keep the work of critical inquiry away from broader audiences. Second, political forces often attack diversity and discredit critique. Finally, the rise of neoliberalism and hyper-capitalism suppress critical inquiry and privileges evidence-based, positivistic research.

In this article, we have used the five contexts for qualitative research (Cooper & White, 2012) to understand the possibilities for empowerment in critical educational research. In our analysis, Hicks’ (2005) article has provided examples of how teachers can adopt responsive and dialogic pedagogies that “start with close readings of students’ lives and voices” (p. 188). Through her constant reflective, self-critical, and participatory methodology, Hicks avoids the potential pitfalls of critical inquiry and, instead, epitomizes the language of possibility in critical inquiry. Thus, the five contexts of Cooper and White (2012) exemplified through Hicks (2005) illustrate the emancipatory potentials of critical educational research by engaging “the researched in a democratized process of inquiry characterized by negotiation, reciprocity, [and] empowerment” (Lather, 1986, p. 257).

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White, R.E., Cooper, K. (2022). An Introduction to Critical Approaches. In: Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_2

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