Accommodating the diversity of learners in mainstream schooling and providing high quality education for all, inclusive education is prioritised at international and European levels as a human rights issue and as a reform strategy which tackles inequalities and promotes social cohesion within both schools and wider society. This book advances critical realist ideas in empirical research in order to close the theory–practice gap and shift the emphasis from epistemology to ontology with regard to teachers’ empowerment to provide inclusive education. With a focus on the school context rather than the agency of the individual teacher, the authors use empirical data from case studies to demonstrate teachers’ disempowerment as real, and rooted in features of reality. Offering a unified critical realist model, the book challenges taken-for-granted ideas and practices concerning the empowerment of teachers in inclusive education and seeks to set the ground for a more holistic and inclusive educational change.

This authoritative, state-of-the-art reference work builds on its first edition to provide a cutting-edge systematic review of the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality. Studying 25 different national contexts drawn from every inhabited continent on earth and building upon material from the earlier edition, the work analyses educational policies, practices and research on minority students, immigrants and refugees. The editors and contributors explore principal research traditions from countries as diverse as Argentina, China, Norway and South Africa, examining the factors promoting social cohesion as well as considerations regarding the use of international test score data. Seamlessly integrating findings of national reviews, the editors and contributors analyse how national contexts of race/ethnic relations shape the character and content of educational inequalities, and deftly map out new directions for future research in the area. Global in its perspective and definitive in content, this one-stop volume will be an indispensable reference resource for a wide range of academics, students and researchers in the fields of education, sociology, race and ethnicity studies and social policy. Chapter 20 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at SpringerLink (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-94724-2_20)

This volume examines the notion of criticality in language studies. Drawing on the work of the Frankfurt School – Adorno, Habermas, Horkheimer, and Marcuse, among others – the chapters in the volume examine a variety of linguistic contexts: from gender activism to web journalism, from the classroom to the open streets. It also presents theoretical and methodological guidelines to researchers interested in • Expanding their critical outlook for meaning brought on by the notion of criticality in contemporary language studies. • Understanding criticality in languages through historical, political, and social perspectives. • Using linguistics and language studies as tools to dissect and disclose social injustices. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of language studies and linguistics, philosophy, politics, and sociology and social policy.

This comprehensive, state-of-the-art reference work provides the first systematic review to date of how sociologists have studied the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality over the last thirty years in eighteen different national contexts.

This international and interdisciplinary collection gathers stories from researchers and research students about their methodological encounters with critical realism. Whether the contributors are experienced or novice researchers, they are predominantly new to critical realism. For various reasons, as the contributors’ detail, they have all been drawn to critical realism. It is well known that critical realism can be bewildering and even overwhelming to newcomers, especially to those unfamiliar with language of, and without a grounding in, philosophy. While there are now numerous and important introductory and applied critical realist texts that make critical realism more accessible to a broader audience, stories from newcomers have been absent – especially as part of a single collection. The significance and uniqueness of this collection lies in its documentation of first-hand reflective insights on the practical use and implementation of critical realism. The contributors feature critical realist inspired research journeys in Australia, England, Scotland, Belgium, Sweden, and Spain. The hope of this book is that the stories and accounts presented in it will inspire – or at least sufficiently arouse – the curiosity of others to explore critical realist possibilities, which we believe offer enormous value to serious researchers across and within all disciplines and subjects who are interested in rigorous intellectual work with a socially progressive purpose.

In assessing the current state of feminism and gender studies, whether on a theoretical or a practical level, it has become increasingly challenging to avoid the conclusion that these fields are in a state of disarray. Indeed, feminist and gender studies discussions are beset with persistent splits and disagreements. This reader suggests that returning to, and placing centre-stage, the role of philosophy, especially critical realist philosophy of science, is invaluable for efforts that seek to overcome or mitigate the uncertainty and acrimony that have resulted from this situation. In particular, it claims that the dialectical logic that runs through critical realist philosophy is ideally suited to advancing feminist and gender studies discussions about broad ontological and epistemological questions and considerations, intersectionality, and methodology, methods, and empirical research. By bringing together four new and eight existing writings this reader provides both a focal point for renewed discussions about the potential and actual contributions of critical realist philosophy to feminism and gender studies and a timely contribution to these discussions.

The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art radically challenges our assumptions about what art is, what art does, who is doing it, and why it matters. Rejecting the modernist and market-driven misconception that art is only what artists do, Wilson instead presents a realist case for living artfully. Art is defined as the skilled practice of giving shareable form to our experiences of being-in-relation with the real; that is to say, the causally generative domain of the world that extends beyond our direct observation, comprising relations, structures, mechanisms, possibilities, powers, processes, systems, forces, values, ways of being. In communicating such aesthetic experience we behold life’s betweenness – "the space that separates", so coming to know ourselves as connected. Providing the first dedicated and comprehensive account of art and aesthetics from a critical realist perspective – Aesthetic Critical Realism (ACR), Wilson argues for a profound paradigm shift in how we understand and care for culture in terms of our system(s) of value recognition. Fortunately, we have just the right tool to help us achieve this transformation – and it’s called art. Offering novel explanatory accounts of art, aesthetic experience, value, play, culture, creativity, artistic truth and beauty, this book will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of art, aesthetics, human development, philosophy and critical realism, as well as cultural practitioners and policy-makers.