Critical Realism and Education

This case study explicates the knowledge-knower structures that are valued in the assessment of Graphic Design (GD) practical work in a multi-campus Private Higher Education (PHE) context. Assessment, which provides the measure for student success and progression, plays a significant role in Higher Education (HE). It is acknowledged that, in addition to increased pressure on educators to deliver high pass and throughput rates, there is often scrutiny of their assessment practice to ensure that it is fair, reliable, valid and transparent. The aspects of reliability and validity are particularly significant in for-profit private higher education institutions, where a strong focus on efficiency may result in added scrutiny of assessment practices. Although the assessment of GD practical work exemplifies these pressures and objectives, its characteristics and practices set it apart from many of the more standard forms of assessment found in HE. Not only is GD practical work predominantl...

This case study explicates the knowledge-knower structures that are valued in the assessment of Graphic Design (GD) practical work in a multi-campus Private Higher Education (PHE) context. Assessment, which provides the measure for student success and progression, plays a significant role in Higher Education (HE). It is acknowledged that, in addition to increased pressure on educators to deliver high pass and throughput rates, there is often scrutiny of their assessment practice to ensure that it is fair, reliable, valid and transparent. The aspects of reliability and validity are particularly significant in for-profit private higher education institutions, where a strong focus on efficiency may result in added scrutiny of assessment practices. Although the assessment of GD practical work exemplifies these pressures and objectives, its characteristics and practices set it apart from many of the more standard forms of assessment found in HE. Not only is GD practical work predominantly visual rather than text-based, but complex achievements and tacit knowledge are assessed. This form of assessment traditionally relies on panel or group marking by connoisseurs who consider what is commonly termed ‘person’, ‘process’ and ‘product’ when making value judgements. Therefore, in GD assessment knowledge, the design product, the graphic designer and what the graphic designer does may all be valued. GD assessment, where outcomes are not easily stated, relies on the tacit expertise of assessors and can often be perceived to be subjective and unreliable. It therefore sits uncomfortably with results-driven HE and institutional priorities.
In light of this context and the complex and social nature of GD assessment, a critical realist approach provided the guiding metatheory for this case study. Critical realism considers the unseen but real mechanisms that exist and interact within a context to create a phenomenon such as an assessment practice. In this case study the knowledge-structuring theories of Basil Bernstein and Karl Maton were used to uncover these mechanisms. Bernstein and Maton propose that new knowledge, the curriculum and pedagogy, which includes assessment, communicate the valued disciplinary knowledge and who controls these communications.
For this study the institutional documents and voices of assessors provided insight into the GD assessment practice; data was generated through a lecturer survey, the study guides and assessor conversations at both the formative and summative assessment stages. Given the significance of both knowledge and expertise in GD, Specialisation, one of the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) dimensions, provided the conceptual tool whereby the generated data were analysed and categorised, and the underlying valued knowledge-knower structures, or specialisation codes, were identified.
The identified specialisation codes revealed a number of code clashes, matches and shifts, which highlighted instances of mixed or conflicting communication regarding what was valued and used in GD assessment. These clashes, matches and shifts have significant implications for curriculum design, pedagogy and assessment. As a result the findings may have relevance for students, lecturers and assessors who work in practice-based fields which require the assessment of complex achievements and rely on a specialised gaze to judge standards.
Informed by the findings of this study, I argue that there is a fundamental conflict between what is valued within the broader national South African Higher Education system and Private Higher Education institutional context, and the nature of GD assessment. The broader structures, guided by a techno-rationalist approach to assessment and the pressures of massification, success, compliance and institutional efficiencies, value explicitly-stated outcomes and criteria, propositional knowledge and a positivist ideal of one correct mark for any one assessment, while the GD assessment practice values the more social and tacit elements of procedural knowledge and a specialist knower as evidenced in a largely tacit GD gaze that assessors possess and students aim to develop. The uncovering of the knowledge-knower structures used in GD assessment has the potential to make the assessed gaze more explicit to lecturers, assessors and ultimately to students. My findings offer a deeper understanding of the assessment of knower code disciplines which require a specialist gaze for the judgement of student work, and the pressures experienced in this type of assessment in a HE context.

It has been claimed that the ontological theories of Roy Bhaskar can provide guiding principles for social scientists, which can help steer them through errors and misconceptions. This article argues that neither Bhaskar's 'Critical Realism' nor any overarching philosophical ontology can provide workable guiding principles for social scientific research and that such principles are unnecessary.

This contribution to the symposium on Michael Young’s article ‘Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge based approach’, supports his contention that curriculum theory has lost sight of its object – ‘what is taught and learned in schools’, and argues that this has particularly deleterious consequences for vocational education and training (VET).  VET is unproblematically positioned as applied, experiential and work-focused learning and it is seen as a solution for those who are alienated from or unsuccessful in more traditional forms of academic education. This paper argues that rather than being a mechanism for social inclusion, VET is instead a key way in which social inequality is mediated and reproduced because it excludes students from accessing the theoretical knowledge they need to participate in debates and controversies in society and in their occupational field of practice. It presents a social realist analysis to argue why VET students need access to theoretical knowledge, how a focus on experiential and applied learning constitutes a mechanism for social exclusion, and what a ‘knowledge rich’ VET curriculum would look like.

This paper develops a social realist critique of competency-based training (CBT) by drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and the sociology of Basil Bernstein as complementary modes of analysis. CBT is the mandated model of curriculum in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia. It results in an impoverished education that disenfranchises students from access to the knowledge they need to participate in ‘society’s conversation’ and in debates within their occupational field of practice. The paper argues that the relationship between constructivism and instrumentalism structured the development of CBT, even though they are distinct theoretical approaches to curriculum. Constructivist discourses around student-centred learning, situated learning and the contextualised nature of knowledge were appropriated and reworked through the prism of instrumentalism, thereby contributing to the justification and legitimation of CBT, but also to its continuing theorisation and development. The synergies between constructivism and instrumentalism arise because both are committed to the experiential within the contextual as the source of knowledge and this provides the scope for instrumentalism to plunder constructivism. Both emphasise the contextual, situated and problem-oriented nature of knowledge creation and learning and curriculum based on ‘authentic’ learning in the workplace.

New forms of museum practice that explore the dynamics of social and ecological processes as interlinked systems are increasingly urgent. Critical realist philosophy is used to consider the emergence of tensions between museological processes of decolonization and ecologization, and potentials for their resolution into a new form of practice, which is conceptualized as eco-decolonial. The analysis is focused on South African museums, but is contextualized within international theory and practice. An exploration of the ontology of museum work surfaces a core tension in that trends towards a relational and emancipatory practice are paradoxically embedded within neoliberal ideology. Neoliberalism depends on and perpetuates the problematic human-nature dualism of the colonial era, and constrains the development of progressive social-ecological forms of museum practice. The analysis explores potentials for the resolution of this tension, in a contribution towards the transformation of the philosophical and theoretical frameworks of museum practice.

This study introduces dialectical critical realism into museology as a philosophical underlabourer for the development of new theoretical potentials for the transformation of museum practice. The idea of the museum is in a moment of fluidity evident in emergent decolonial and ecological perspectives and in the International Council of Museum’s process of redefinition of the museum. The potential to reimagine the museum lacks a coherent philosophical and theoretical foundation. The persistence of museological dualism separates the social from the ecological and absents the emergence of relational modes of thinking and practice. This study conceives an ecological-decolonial or eco-decolonial mode of museology that is disruptive of dualism and generative of relationality, and is thus generative of agency for deeper, more effective and enduring social-ecological justice.
The core of this thesis is the development of the eco-decolonial mode of museology through the DCR onto-axiological chain or ‘MELD’ schema. At 1M a depth ontological analysis augmented by interviews with key informants establishes a dialectic of society and ecology in the museological context. 1M surfaces capitalism and the implicit neoliberal ontology of museology as deep causal mechanisms of the 2E persistence of museological human-nature dualism. The paradox of ‘emancipatory neoliberalism’ is a policy-practice contradiction that absents potentials for transformation of the museum and that is held in place by the grounding ontological activity of museology, collection.
The 2E perspective on absences enables the emergence of new transformative pathways towards the 3L vision of the eco-decolonial mode of museology as a (4D) new way of thinking and working to resolve neoliberal restrictions. The fundamental 4D change envisioned for museum philosophy, theory and practice is an ontological transformation from traditionalist human-nature dualism to a progressive human-nature dialectic. A case study considers instances where museum workers exercised the agency to expand practice in this way.
Future work using the expansive learning methodology of Change Laboratories will develop and implement the potentials generated by the onto-axiological chain for the eco-decolonial mode to bring real change to traditional, dualist museum practice, in order to ensure the relevance and the agency of the museum as a social structure in and for a changing world.

A considerable amount of research has been conducted into women's experiences of leadership in the education sector with calls to further promote equality, increase diversity and foster inclusion but ways forward seem less easy to implement with the same experiences and frustrations continuing to emerge. This article applies insights from critical realism to educational leadership development to seek a fuller understanding as to why these concerns remain and how they might be addressed. The article begins by considering barriers to women attaining leadership positions and accessing leadership development including those posed by the 'leadership turn' and new managerialism. Some ideas behind critical realism are briefly introduced before exploring the possible implications for educational leadership development. It is argued that a fundamental challenge to, and changing of, the dominant concept of leadership must take place before progress can be made. Directions are proposed for critical realist work in the theory and practice of educational leadership development and the wider field.

New forms of museum practice that explore the dynamics of social and ecological processes as interlinked systems are increasingly urgent. Critical realist philosophy is used to consider the emergence of tensions between museological processes of decolonization and ecologization, and potentials for their resolution into a new form of practice, which is conceptualized as eco-decolonial. The analysis is focused on South African museums, but is contextualized within international theory and practice. An exploration of the ontology of museum work surfaces a core tension in that trends towards a relational and emancipatory practice are paradoxically embedded within neoliberal ideology. Neoliberalism depends on and perpetuates the problematic human-nature dualism of the colonial era, and constrains the development of progressive social-ecological forms of museum practice. The analysis explores potentials for the resolution of this tension, in a contribution towards the transformation of th...

Neste artigo buscamos refletir sobre o hibridismo de fronteiras entre o realismo crítico e a análise de discurso crítica. Procuramos mostrar as aproximações entre essas duas abordagens, bem como algumas implicações possíveis como consequência da porosidade entre suas fronteiras disciplinares e epistemológicas. Começamos por tecer considerações sobre a filosofia do realismo crítico, formulada por Bhaskar (1998, 2000, 2002a, 2002b), para, em seguida, explorar o potencial explanatório da análise de discurso crítica, buscando discutir algumas implicações do realismo crítico para os estudos da semiose. Também argumentamos que a complexidade da relação entre as dimensões intransitiva (ontológica) e transitiva (epistemológica) da ciência, quando se trata do mundo social, pode ser coerentemente explorada em abordagens discursivas. Palavras-Chave: Realismo crítico, análise de discurso crítica, hibridismo

A considerable amount of research has been conducted into women’s experiences of leadership in the education sector with calls to further promote equality, increase diversity and foster inclusion but ways forward seem less easy to implement with the same experiences and frustrations continuing to emerge. This article applies insights from critical realism to educational leadership development to seek a fuller understanding as to why these concerns remain and how they might be addressed. The article begins by considering barriers to women attaining leadership positions and accessing leadership development including those posed by the ‘leadership turn’ and new managerialism. Some ideas behind critical realism are briefly introduced before exploring the possible implications for educational leadership development. It is argued that a fundamental challenge to, and changing of, the dominant concept of leadership must take place before progress can be made. Directions are proposed for critical realist work in the theory and practice of educational leadership development and the wider field.