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As scholars and researchers of higher education or higher educationists, we are constantly confronted with important social questions that need to be investigated using rigorous analytical tools and framed using well-grounded theoretical and conceptual ideas. Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education provides such tools and frameworks to address some of the most significant challenges facing the field of study. Edited by noted scholars Ana M. Martinez-Aleman, Brian Pusser, and Estela Mara Bensimon, the text introduces various adaptations of critical theory to inform policy and practice. They place a particular focus on the ways in which critical research design can inform how politics in higher education is understood and policy is made. They go on to say:
To a far greater extent than in past decades, however, much of the contemporary policy research in higher education today is driven by scholars, working in disciplines traditionally at some remove from the majority of the work in the field: economists, political scientists, demographers, legal scholars, public policy analysts, and scholars of business and management. We argue that these fields are also the areas in the social sciences that have made the least use of - and, arguably, resisted - the forms of critical scholarship. We thus contend that the use of critical research design and the application of critical vision in higher education are in danger of being 'crowded out' before they have had a chance to thrive. (pp. 5-6)
The audience for this book is not exclusively those who are affiliated with the field of higher education. Although, the book states that its contents were developed to aid in the teaching in masters and doctoral programs covering education and public policy. The authors also set out to appeal to other disciplines and fields of study that do not traditionally utilize critical theoretical approaches. And it is hoped that the text would appeal to other disciplines and fields, such as anthropology, women's studies, and sociology, that have previously utilized critical theories significantly. Particularly, they wanted to encourage the application of critical approaches to the research and scholarship in higher education.
In the first chapter, entitled Critical Discourse Analysis in Higher Education Policy Research, Martinez-Aleman provides a compelling perspective on the ways in which critical theory...