Critical Inquiry and Critical Theory in Education Research

Roots in Critical Theory

Critical Inquiry has its roots in critical theory, which stemmed from the approaches of the Frankfurt School of philosophers in the mid-20th century. The Frankfurt School was led by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and other German intellectuals who had emigrated from Germany during the era of the Third Reich. They held an essentially neo-Marxist point of view — that is, they based their critical analysis of society on the fact that the proletariat had failed to seize power from the elites. Adorno and Horkheimer especially focused on the "culture industry," which they claimed was responsible for the failure of the proletariat in the West to escape class oppression. The "culture industry" promoted the concept that the elites wanted the proletariat to adopt — namely, that they were comfortable and happy with the way things were. Through technological innovations like television and propaganda-producing systems like Hollywood, the working class was easily manipulated into doing exactly what the elites wanted them to do: nothing.

In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1948) and The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944), Adorno and Horkheimer put forward the notion that one should adopt a critical theoretical lens when analyzing society. The way things were should be deconstructed and broken apart, because in doing so one sees how and why a given arrangement was constructed in the first place. It is, in other words, no different from when an automobile manufacturer purchases a competitor's model in order to take it apart and study how the competition builds its vehicles.

Hoggart (1957) built on the ideas of the Frankfurt School by asserting that the working class had not exactly been duped by the "culture industry" into abandoning the struggle for power. Instead, the working class had simply lost interest in that struggle — it no longer cared; it was content with the status quo. Hoggart (1957) wrote that "most mass-entertainments are in the end what D.H. Lawrence described as 'anti-life.' They are full of corrupt brightness, of improper appeals and moral evasions. To recall instances: they tend towards a view of the world in which progress is conceived as a seeking of material possessions, equality as a moral leveling, and freedom as the ground for endless irresponsible pleasure" (p. 306). It was his contention that the working class wanted "irresponsible pleasure" instead of the kind of responsibility that comes with power and authority. Hoggart essentially argued that the working class had adopted a cheap, materialistic, sentimental view of life — believing it could be happy so long as it had the money required to consume the products offered by the elites. In other words, it had traded sovereignty for trinkets and amusements.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire (2000) argues that the working class must rediscover its potential and rekindle its desire for authority. From the perspective of critical theory and critical inquiry, Freire (2000) examines the role of the educator and the student in the modern classroom. His conclusion is that the oppression of the working class is essentially a mental state that can be overthrown once the student realizes that there are no genuine chains binding him to his social or class position in life. The chains are illusory — the comforts and trinkets despised by Hoggart, Adorno, and Horkheimer are nothing more than empty promises that can easily be left behind. If today's students and working class reject what the elites offer them, the power of the elites becomes nil.

The Traditional Approach to Critical Inquiry

As Short (1991) observes, underlying Critical Inquiry is the basic Golden Rule — that one should do unto others as one would have them do unto oneself (p. 245). How this translates into practice is through trust: a school is a complex system that cannot be examined without an appropriate level of trust. Critical Inquiry is not interested in what passes as truth on the surface; it is interested in dismantling the whole to see how and why the complex system is the way it is. To accomplish this, a degree of trust and honesty must exist between the subject and the inquirer.

Critical Inquiry has grown out of critical theory, as Short (1991) demonstrates. Short (1991) notes that "to be critical, an inquiry must challenge directly underlying human interests and ideologies" (p. 245) — and this is essentially what the early critical theorists were doing by examining society and unpacking its assumptions and commonplace behaviors.

This unpacking process is conducted in the following manner. First, a discourse must be initiated between the researcher and the subject. Second, the "comprehensibility, sincerity, fidelity, and/or justifiability of the utterances by others" must be refuted or called into question. Third, an expression of "values, beliefs, attitudes, sentiments, intentions, interests, etc." should be made. Fourth, the discourse should be regulated (Short, 1991, p. 249).

The traditional approach also includes adopting a kind of "dilemma language" in which the tensions of a school are exposed — such as the allocation of resources (equal vs. differential), the importance of social issues, and the competition for control or power within the establishment (Short, 1991, p. 249). In this manner, Critical Inquiry can enter into the dynamic and begin uncovering the reality of the situation.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Critical Inquiry in Research

There are both advantages and disadvantages to using Critical Inquiry in research, and these are evident in the available literature on the subject.

Caldwell's study on public education funding, for instance, focuses on the socio-economic conditions responsible for preventing low-income schools from producing quality academic results. While this finding sheds light on one variable responsible for the prevailing condition, it cannot be said to represent the totality of the phenomenon. Caldwell (2012) indicates that the primary source of funding for public schools in the U.S. is local property taxes. The study takes a Marxist Criticism approach — a form of Critical Inquiry — to the issue of why the social class composition is perpetuated from generation to generation. The finding of Caldwell (2012) is that "when public schools rely on local property taxes, their students are married to the social class from which they originated" (p. 54). What this means in terms of the larger problem is that no matter how much funding is supplied by the state to struggling schools, the essential social composition of those schools is unlikely to change because of the community in which each school is situated. These regional areas are essentially "fixed" in the sense that their composition is not likely to change short of a mandated movement of people in or out of the community. From the critical theory standpoint, Caldwell's study suggests that public school failures are simply representative of a community's failure to rise above its "fixed" class system.

However, such a view can lead to a simplistic interpretation — namely that the fix is purely a socio-economic one. Yet when one considers the arguments of Adorno and Hoggart, the conclusion that should be drawn is that socio-economic conditions are really an extension of an underlying reality: the class of individuals in a given region is inherently comfortable with the arrangement, accepts the lack of academic achievement, and is not interested in changing it. Were their socio-economic condition improved, the end result might still be the same — money spent on "trinkets" and "amusements" with little improvement in academic outcomes, because the social inputs within the community are not actively oriented toward that goal. As Freire would say, the students and their class are not engaged in overthrowing their oppressors. As Hoggart would argue, they accept their oppression; as Adorno would say, they have been duped into accepting their position and relinquishing the struggle for improvement.

Thus, the strength of Critical Inquiry is that it opens the door to seeing below the surface. Its weakness is that it is easy to content oneself with simplistic findings, such as the straightforward Marxist interpretation described above. Yet if one is genuinely engaged with the historical and theoretical development of Critical Inquiry, one recognizes that simplistic answers are not the key to providing real solutions — they must be actively guarded against. The real solutions are those that promote activity and engagement on the part of the subject and provide a new orientation for stakeholders so that a more positive goal can be achieved. In other words, the subject must be turned from a passive participant into an active participant at every level. This is simultaneously the strength and the weakness of Critical Inquiry, for achieving this objective can be a monumental task — yet one that is well worth pursuing because it is a wholly transformative undertaking.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the approach that I believe will provide the best outcome for this dissertation is Critical Inquiry. It is one I am comfortable with because I have studied the history of critical theory and the schools of thought that emerged throughout the 20th century in its shadow. It presents itself as a suitable approach to the issues faced by the school district, whose schools are failing in spite of extra funds being allocated by the state. The reason for the failure is not yet fully known: is it a problem of leadership, misallocation, teacher turnover, student and parent engagement, or poverty? The most likely answer is that it is all of these issues combined — because they are all elements of the culture in which the community, the students, the teachers, and all stakeholders in the school district participate. Identifying, defining, and addressing that culture is exactly what a critical theorist can do, and taking the Critical Inquiry approach to these problems is the best way I can see to providing a real and lasting solution.

References

Caldwell, P. (2012). Marxist criticism of public education funding and social reproduction. Colgate Academic Review, 2(10): 54–58.

Connelly, F. M., He, M. F., & Philion, J. (2007). The Sage handbook of curriculum and instruction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Hoggart, R. (1957). The uses of literacy. London: Chatto & Windus.

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (1948). Dialectic of enlightenment. Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press.

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (1944). The culture industry. London: Routledge.

Ritchie, J., & Wilson, D. (2000). Teacher narrative as critical inquiry: Rewriting the script. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Ropers-Huilman, B. (1999). Witnessing: Critical inquiry in a poststructural world. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 12(1): 21–35.

Short, E. C. (1991). Forms of curriculum inquiry. New York: State University of New York Press.