3rd Annual Special Theme Issue
CALL FOR PAPERS
Critical Inquiry for the Social Good:
Methodological Work as a Means For Truth-Telling in Education
Guest Editors:
Aaron M. Kuntz, University of Alabama
Austin Pickup, Aurora University
Proposal Deadline: June 15th, 2015
We propose a special issue of Critical Questions in Education (CQIE)
dedicated to new understandings of critical methodologies in
education. Importantly, we situate inquiry generally—and
methodological work more specifically—within two overarching
philosophical concerns of truth-telling and practical wisdom.
Specifically, we assert that critical work necessarily situates
inquiry within an assumed responsibility for the public good: one thus
engages in inquiry practices in order to promote a more socially-just
society. This alignment of inquiry with social-justice work
productively challenges the use of critical, a term all-too-easily
(and simplistically) invoked in contemporary educational discourse. To
be critical one must work towards truth-claims that disrupt the
normative flow of common-sense; critical work cannot replicate what is
already known. As such, critical inquiry is necessarily radical,
critiquing the existing status quo even as it envisions possible
alternatives to the contemporary moment. This, we propose,
provocatively challenges methodological work within the contemporary
academy: how might inquiry be differently (and, we might say, more
progressively/usefully/
notion of truth/the good (as opposed to moving away from it or
ignoring such notions)? This special issue is thus driven by our
collective interest in how scholars might re-envision “critical work”
when they have to take a stand on truth/the good.
Given our above assertions of what it means to be critical, much work
in educational scholarship that invokes the term might be interpreted
as critical in name only. “Critical” methodologies disappointingly
remain at the level of the procedural, offering only inquiry
techniques as the means through which to engage in critical work. Yet,
such technical formations can never intervene in the incessant
production of the status quo: situated at the level of procedure they
remain governed by the very rationalities that implicate our
contemporary moment. Additionally, the postmodern moment, while
offering a useful deconstruction of grand narratives, has perhaps left
us in a state of scholarly paralysis when it comes to possibilities of
repair or even renewal. Though the proliferation of “critical”
scholarship within various traditions (critical race, critical
Latina/o, critical feminist, critical disability studies, etc.) has
worked to challenge existing hegemonic norms within the educational
landscape, this scholarship often remains hesitant to move toward its
own notions of truth or the good. But, is it enough to challenge the
status quo only to find ourselves groundless? Can we move toward a
critical praxis which takes on positive notions of truth and the good
while still holding to contextual understandings of these same
notions? What answers do the various critical traditions provide about
socially-just education and how might these answers intersect or
depart from one another? In response, we ask educational scholars to
consider a more engaged sense of critical work, one that orients
towards the production of truth-claims surrounding the common good.
Critical methodologies would, in turn, establish orientations towards
meaning-making that are profoundly political, challenging not simply
normative claims, but the very means by which such claims are made. In
this way, critical work intervenes simultaneously on epistemological
and methodological levels.
This issue begins with a philosophical grounding regarding critical
work as an important point of departure. We offer two overlapping
orientations towards criticality and methodology: 1) Foucault’s sense
of parrhesia (or truth-telling) and 2) Aristotelian notions of
phronesis (or practical wisdom). For Foucault, truth-telling involves
recognizing and speaking a truth that is not otherwise made visible by
normative ways of knowing or coming to know. Thus, in order to engage
in parrhesia, one must break from the past in order to imagine a
yet-to-be-realized future. Similarly, Aristotle’s notion of phronesis
is grounded in a deliberative judgment of the present in order to know
how to act in an unforeseen future. As such, both orientations towards
knowing and doing involve: an engaged analysis of the past; a
recognition of how historical ways of knowing and being implicate the
present; a determination to point a way forward towards a more
socially-just future; a contextually grounded sense of value
rationality. Consequently, parrhesia and phronesis offer select
challenges to “critical” methodological work. No longer can someone
claim the critical mantle solely by critiquing what is (this would be
equivalent to saying the educational system is broken, throwing one’s
hands up, and moving along). Instead, critical work involves a great
degree of risk—requiring as it does a commitment to work for some
unknown future in the name of social justice or the social good.
With this in mind, we propose a special issue that invites articles
that provoke the term critical specifically in relation to
methodological work. Given the above assumptions about engagements
with notions of truth and the good, what might a critical methodology
look like? How might it be enacted? What does it require of the
critical methodologist? How might these engagements be different (or
similar) within the various traditions of critical inquiry?
Author Guidelines
Proposal Format
Please email a 500-1000 word, excluding references, proposal for
review in a word document to Dr. Aaron Kuntz (contact information
below) by June 15th, 2015. This proposal should include a list of key
references that will be utilized in the chapter, as well as 3-4
keywords. Also, please include a brief author bio (200 word limit) and
all relevant contact information.
Final Manuscript Formatting
• CQIE accepts manuscripts of up to 10,000 words, including abstract,
list of keywords, appendices, footnotes and references, and reserves
the right to return any manuscript that exceeds that length.
• All text must be double-spaced; type size must be 12 point with
1-inch margins on all sides.
• Authors should refer to The Chicago Manual of Style for general
questions of style, grammar, punctuation, and form, and for footnotes
of theoretical, descriptive, or essay-like material.
• The journal defers to author preference in decisions about the
naming and capitalization of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.
Manuscripts should be internally consistent in this regard.
• Authors of empirical research articles may use APA format. Please
refer to Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
for reference and citation styles.
General Timeline
Call for papers: April 15, 2015
Proposals Due: June 15th
Accept/Reject: July 1st
Draft Articles Due: November 15th
Feedback to authors: January 15th, 2016
Final Drafts Due: March 15th
Published: Winter 2016 or Spring 2017
Contact Info
Dr. Aaron M. Kuntz
Department Chair, Educational Studies
Program Coordinator, Educational Research
PO Box 870231
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
205-348-5675 (office) akuntz@bamaed.ua.edu
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