Critical Qualitative Research Reader

This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2012. This volume of transformed research utilizes an activist approach to examine the notion that nothing is apolitical. Research projects themselves are critically examined for power orientations, even as they are used to address curricular problems and educational or societal issues. Philosophical perspectives that have facilitated an understanding of issues of power are used to conceptualize research problems as well as determine methodologies. These life-experience perspectives include, but are not limited to, postcolonial and subaltern studies, feminisms, poststructuralism, cultural studies, and critical race theory. The book also examines the use of language, discourse practices, and power relations that prevent more socially just transformations. The Critical Qualitative Research Reader is an invaluable text for undergraduate and graduate classrooms as well as an important volume for researchers.

Shirley R. Steinberg is the Director and Chair of The Werklund Foundation Centre for Youth Leadership in Education and Professor of Youth Studies at the University of Calgary. She is the author and editor of many books in critical pedagogy, urban and youth culture, and cultural studies. Her most recent books include: Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood (2011); 19 Urban Questions: Teaching in the City (2010); Christotainment: Selling Jesus Through Popular Culture (2009); Diversity and Multiculturalism: A Reader (2009); and Media Literacy: A Reader (2007). A former classroom teacher in Tennessee, Gaile S. Cannella joined the faculty of the University of North Texas as the Velma E. Schmidt Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Studies, Critical Qualitative Research Methodologies in 2009. Dr. Cannella’s graduate degrees are from Tennessee Technological University and the University of Georgia. She has served as a professor of education at Louisiana State University, Texas A&M University in College Station, and Arizona State University in Tempe. She has authored or edited several books, including: Deconstructing Early Childhood Education: Social Justice and Revolution; Embracing Identities in Early Childhood Education: Diversity and Possibilities (with Sue Greishaber); Kidworld: Childhood Studies, Global Perspectives, and Education, (with Joe Kincheloe); Childhood and Postcolonization: Power, Education, and Contemporary Practice (with Radhika Viruru), and Childhoods: A Handbook (with Lourdes Diaz Soto) as well as published articles in such journals as Qualitative Inquiry and Critical Studies-Critical Methodologies. Her current research projects are designed to support equity and increased opportunity for all young children, and especially for those who have faced increased conditions of oppression in contemporary neoliberalism. Additionally, she focuses on the development of critical qualitative research methods and the conceptualization of a critical social science across diverse fields/forms of knowledge.