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This chapter addresses a sensitive topic in the field of education: the relationship between and among narrative inquiry, critical analysis, and critical theory. It argues that narrative inquirers are critical – but not in the same way that critical theorists are critical, although they may draw on the same literature and terms. To make our point, we unpack three of our peer-reviewed articles and highlight our theoretical frames and research moves to demonstrate criticality in narrative inquiry. We specifically discuss (1) titles and topics, (2) research frameworks, (3) historical and contemporary data, (4) use of participants' voices (words and feelings), (5) themes, and (6) new knowledge. We mostly argue that narrative inquiry exists because of experience. From experience, everything else unfolds – including criticality – depending on where the researcher in relationship with research participants, takes the inquiry. This chapter explicitly addresses a lived issue known both inside the narrative inquiry community and outside of it.

This chapter presents a description of a pilot course for 12th-grade students in research methods and writing, using Guided Inquiry Design to develop students’ critical literacy and information literacy skills.

Using a practitioner inquiry methodology, this teacher research study makes use of qualitative data to examine student perspectives and experiences, teaching artifacts and student work samples. The research seeks to identify ways students practice critical literacies when engaged with inquiry learning, as well as the characteristics of a classroom learning community designed to support students’ experiences in inquiry learning.

Teachers of research-based writing are encouraged to adopt a guided inquiry approach to their instruction in which they flip the script on the thesis statement, allow for an almost uncomfortable amount of exploratory reading, put the focus on the process instead of the product, and form a guided inquiry team with the school librarian.

This chapter serves as a resource for practicing teachers, teacher researchers, and teacher educators assisting new teachers in embedding critical inquiry skill development in student writing.

Advanced Placement Human Geography continues to grow in popularity at the secondary level, but not without its supporters and critics. The purpose of this paper is to examine one critique, the lack of critical geography and then give two examples how teachers could incorporate it using inquiry.

Critical geography examines the praxis between space, place and identity, exposing power imbalances constructed within space and place. Critical geographers also consider how to transform space and place to be more equitable. This paper provides two examples of how critical geography can be infused into content covered in AP Human Geography using the C3 Framework and the Inquiry Design Model. By infusing critical geographic perspectives into AP Human Geography students practice asking questions about inequities in space and place with an opportunity to become agents of transformation.

There is a gap in AP Human Geography when it comes to incorporating critical geography. This paper looks to redress that by providing two examples on how critical geography could be used in an AP Human Geography curriculum.

This collection of two inquiries is given as ways that AP Human Geography instructors could incorporate critical geography into their classrooms.

This paper aims to present findings from a three-year qualitative study that used a model of teacher learning referred to as teaching as inquiry (Manfra, 2019). Teaching as inquiry centers the teacher as a learner in a prolonged and “systematic process of data collection and analysis focused on changing teaching” (p. 167). Findings from the larger qualitative study demonstrate the work of collecting transcripts and using discourse analysis to analyze classroom discourse fostered high school English teachers’ knowledge and skills for facilitating critical conversations (Schieble et al., 2020). For this paper, the authors highlight Paula, a white, female secondary teacher who is dual certified in English Language Arts and ESL. Findings from Paula’s case demonstrate the ways the teacher inquiry group disrupted Paula’s language ideologies of linguistic purism, an ideology embedded in white supremacist and colonialist, hegemonic language policies and practices (Kroskrity, 2004), and transformed her instructional practices over time.

The research used qualitative methods for design and scope to generate an information-rich instrumental case study (Stake, 1995). Case study is a form of qualitative inquiry that concentrates on experiential knowledge of the case. This study used case study methods to construct an instrumental case to understand how participation in the teacher inquiry group shaped Paula’s facilitation of critical conversations. Data analysis used inductive and deductive qualitative coding procedures and discourse analysis (Gee, 2004; Rogers, 2018) to address the research questions.

Findings demonstrate that prior to meeting with the teacher inquiry group, Paula’s teaching practices embodied linguistic separatism by emphasizing that standardized English was the “appropriate” way to participate in critical conversations. Through studying her classroom discourse, the inquiry group supported her to critically question these instructional practices and ideologies. Findings demonstrate that the work of the inquiry group supported her embodiment and articulation of a translanguaging ideology that supported her facilitation of critical conversations.

Findings from this study contributes to scholarly and professional knowledge about how models of teaching as inquiry (Manfra, 2019) demonstrate a positive or reconstructive impact on teacher and student learning. This study highlights the potential for reconstructive shifts in the context of how teachers learn together and the tools that support them in doing so.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the plans for and implementation of critical dramatic inquiry with middle school youth. The authors also provide a theoretical frame for understanding dramatic inquiry as an embodied, persuasive and reflexive practice that can inform and transform the ways youth and their teachers experience their own and others’ worlds. Throughout, the authors argue for the centrality of imagination in youth literacies and critical inquiry.

Working with Stetsenko’s (2008) concepts of contribution and agency, the authors considered the different ways youth “found [their] place among other people and ultimately, [found] a way to contribute to the continuous flow of sociocultural practices” (p. 17). Further, the authors considered Stetsenko’s (2012) reference to moral philosophy and the idea that “humans are understood as being connected with the world precisely through their own acts – through what has been termed “engaged agency” in moral philosophy (Taylor, 1995, p. 7)”. The authors read and annotated documents, noting key moments in the videos where youth collaborated in “finding a place among other people” and became “connected with the world […] through their own acts”.

The authors identified three ways dramatic inquiry orients youth in time-space, offering addresses and possibilities for answerability that direct their actions toward critical, ethical questions: creating a life through embodied positioning, reflecting on action through transformation of representations and establishing a direction for one’s own becoming through persuasion and answerability. These three modes of contributing to a dramatic inquiry extend current research and thought about drama by pointing to specific contributions to and purposes for action in drama experiences.

This work represents a single two-session workshop of teacher research with middle school youth engaged in dramatic inquiry, and is, therefore, the beginning of a conceptual framework for understanding dramatic inquiry as critical sociocultural practice. As such, this work will need to be developed with the aim of extending the dramatic inquiry work across several days or weeks, to trace youth insights and subsequent actions.

Critical literacy educators who want to implement dramatic inquiry will find clear descriptions of practices and an analytic framework that supports planning for and reflection on social change arts-based experiences with youth.

The authors argue that educators who aim to support youth actions, in relation to multiple viewpoints and possible futures, need to pose imagined and dramatized addresses to which youth can imagine and embody possibilities and express possible answers (Bakhtin). Based on Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, the authors argue that drama-based experiences disrupt the everyday so youth may collectively explore and contribute to an emerging vision of equity and belonging.

Few studies have engaged Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance as a way to understand learning, social change and the role of imagination. This study describes and explores a unique instantiation of process drama informed by critical sociocultural theory.

This paper aims to examine how a collaborative narrative inquiry focused on cultivating critical English Language Arts (ELA) pedagogies supported teacher agency, or “the capacity of actors to critically shape their own responsiveness to problematic situations” (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, p. 971).

Situated in a semester-long inquiry group, eight k-16 educators used narrative inquiry processes (Clandinin, 1992) to write and collectively analyze (Ezzy, 2002) stories describing personal experiences that brought them to critical ELA pedagogies. They engaged in three levels of analysis across the eight narratives, including open coding, thematic identification, and identification of how the narrative inquiry impacted their classroom practices.

Across the narratives, the authors identify what aspects of the ELA reading, writing and languaging curriculum emerged as problematic; situate themselves in systems of oppression and privilege; and examine how processes of critical narrative inquiry contributed to their capacities to respond to these issues.

Collaborative narrative inquiry between teachers and teacher educators (Sjostrom and McCoyne, 2017) can be a powerful method to cultivate critical pedagogies.

Teachers across grade levels, schools, disciplines and backgrounds can collectively organize to cultivate critical ELA pedagogies.

Although coordinated opportunities to engage in critical inquiry work across k-16 contexts are rare, the authors believe that the knowledge, skills and confidence they gained through this professional inquiry sensitized them to oppressive curricular norms and expanded their repertoires of resistance.

Narrative inquiry and life history are privileged methods for studying people's lives, experiences, and identity construction. In this article, I argue that critical life history inquiry is especially suitable for studies of those, who have actively involved in progressive social and cultural movements and have developed an identity as activist educators.

Purpose – In this chapter we highlight the potential of critical and poststructural paradigms and associated qualitative research approaches for future research in strategy. In addition, we aim to contribute to the proliferation of applications of qualitative methodologies as well as to facilitate the diversity of qualitative inquiry approaches in the strategy field.

Methodology/Approach – Building on insights from standpoint theory, we discuss the importance and necessity of cultivating critical and poststructural paradigms in strategy. Furthermore, we review three related qualitative inquiry approaches (i.e., discourse analysis, deconstruction, and genealogy) and develop suggestions for their utilization in future strategy research on emerging market economies.

Findings – We highlight key concepts of critical and poststructural paradigms as well as of the selected approaches and provide a variety of examples relevant to strategy research to illustrate potential applications and analytic considerations.

Originality/Value of chapter – Critical and poststructural paradigms and related research methodologies are underutilized in strategy research; however, they are important contributions to paradigmatic and methodological diversity in the field generally and necessary approaches for developing our understanding of strategy phenomena in the context of emerging market economies specifically.

The purpose of this article is to explain and demonstrate a critical disciplinary read aloud strategy that has both an equity goal and a social studies goal.

The authors begin by explaining background information on read alouds and critical disciplinary literacy. Then, the authors explain the four steps in the critical disciplinary literacy read aloud strategy. As the authors do so, they share important research that supports each of the four steps. Next, the authors offer a sample lesson plan using the informational picture book, Carter Reads the Newspaper.

The lesson plan uses a 5E template to promote critical disciplinary literacy before, during and after reading in such a way that teachers can foster inquiry through the use of social studies read alouds. After reading this article, teachers will understand more about what critical disciplinary literacy means, what it looks like a lesson plan and how to create their own similar plans using the template and resources provided.

The critical disciplinary literacy strategy offers teachers a way to engage elementary students in work that highlights social justice topics and inquiry.

This article provides a critical appraisal of the relevance of conventional management inquiry to management, and a proposal to use the critical management paradigm to develop genuinely relevant management studies.

Discusses the relevance of conventional management inquiry to management.

Conventional management inquiry closely mirrors scientific inquiry, with strict adherence to scientific method in pursuit of “objective” and rigorous empirical evidence or “proof” of specific and universal managerial truths. The products of this research are published via a machine bureaucracy that reinforces the hegemony of science. However, some academics have expressed concern that there is little uptake in commerce of “new” management ideas, and that practising managers have little or no interest in academic research. Based on 20 years experience of commerce and academe the author explores the underlying reasons for the failure of management academe to be taken seriously by managers.

The article proposes the need for a more applied and critical direction to management research. Some ideas for research are presented at the end of the piece, but the main message is that all management research should be more timely and relevant to practitioners' issues in the daily task of management.

The article is a commentary on the principles on which management should be studied (and to a lesser degree on how these studies should be published). As such it is difficult to suggest any implications for management practitioners. That said the author would advise management practitioners involved in the funding of research to question the relevance of research themes and conventional responses to them. There guidelines drawn for academic practitioners.

Similar ideas on “relevance lost” have been presented previously. However, the arguments have been lost in an academic hegemony that reinforces the requirements for a strictly scientific approach to the study of management. The original proposition of this article is one of the outliers of this approach, critical management theory, should take centre stage in ensuring relevance.