In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. (Post)Critical Methodologies forms a chronology through the texts and concepts that span Patti Lather’s career. Examining (post)critical, feminist and poststructural theories, Lather’s work is organized into thematic sections that span her 35 years of study in this field. These sections include original contributions formed from Lather’s feminism and critical theory background. They contain her most cited works on feminist research and pedagogy, and form a collection of both early and recent writings on the post and post-post, with a focus on critical policy studies and the future of post-qualitative work. With a focus on the implications for qualitative inquiry given the call for scientifically based research in education, this compelling overview moves through Lather’s progressive thoughts on bridging the gap between quantitative and qualitative research in education and provides a unique commentary on some of the most important issues in higher education over the last 30 years. This compilation of Lather's contribution to educational thinking will prove compelling reading to all those engaged in student learning in higher education worldwide.

In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. (Post)Critical Methodologies forms a chronology through the texts and concepts that span Patti Lather’s career. Examining (post)critical, feminist and poststructural theories, Lather’s work is organized into thematic sections that span her 35 years of study in this field. These sections include original contributions formed from Lather’s feminism and critical theory background. They contain her most cited works on feminist research and pedagogy, and form a collection of both early and recent writings on the post and post-post, with a focus on critical policy studies and the future of post-qualitative work. With a focus on the implications for qualitative inquiry given the call for scientifically based research in education, this compelling overview moves through Lather’s progressive thoughts on bridging the gap between quantitative and qualitative research in education and provides a unique commentary on some of the most important issues in higher education over the last 30 years. This compilation of Lather's contribution to educational thinking will prove compelling reading to all those engaged in student learning in higher education worldwide.

The American Psychological Association (2020) reported that some 81% of teenage children (13 to 17 years-of-age) were negatively impacted in a range of ways due to school closures in connection with COVID-19, including 47% who indicated that they “didn’t learn as much as they did in previous years” (para. 21). That perhaps many more than 47% of teenage children in the United States did not learn as much as they did in previous years was documented in the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report which found that “the national average score declines in mathematics for fourth- and eighth-graders were the largest ever recorded in that subject” (Wilburn & Elias, 2022, para. 1). The National Center for Educational Statistics Commissioner commented somewhat hyperbolically that the results showed that “every student was vulnerable to the pandemic’s disruptions” (Wilburn & Elias, 2022, para. 5) and called for a single-minded emphasis on ways to assist students to recover from their trauma and accelerate their learning. Wilburn and Elias (2022) joined those who have pointed out that the learning declines associated with COVID-19 did not occur equitably. The likelihood of a single-minded policy response to change the system and address the achievement gaps exposed by the range of responses to COVID-19 seems small. On the one hand, doubting the sustainability of innovative responses, education historian Larry Cuban referenced the dominant stability of schooling which, if anything, “produces this huge public and professional need to resume schooling as it was” (Young, 2022, para. 18). On the other hand, diverse political agendas will diffuse concerted efforts. Grossman et al. (2021) discussed a pertinent example from Michigan where “public health data, partisanship, and collective bargaining” (p. 637) each played a role in determining school reopening decisions. On this same issue of school reopening, there is credible evidence from Massachusetts that the much maligned and politically explosive masking policies implemented in some schools may have saved lives (Cowger et al., 2022). Roy (2020) asserted that “historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next” (para. 48). The chapters in this volume attest to the willingness of individuals to collaborate in stepping through that portal.

Feminist Critique and the Museum: Educating for a Critical Consciousness illustrates the potential of feminist adult education and research to critique but equally to encourage imaginative responses to traditionally patriarchal museum exhibition representations and practices.

Advancing Culturally Responsive Research and Researchers: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods encourages readers to design and engage in methodologies and methods that place cultural relevancy at the center of inquiry. In doing so, it highlights the need to uplift voices and needs of people who have been historically marginalized in the environments that we both inhabit and engage in as part of knowledge construction. The scholars whose work is featured in this volume take up research from different paradigmatic, ontological, epistemological, axiological, and methodological approaches – yet, with adherence to centering cultural responsiveness in all research decisions. Each chapter seeks to extend understandings of social inequities, methodologies, and/or methods – and to contribute to meaningful and evolving social change through innovative and cutting-edge research strategies. While doing this work, the authors illustrate and highlight the importance of researcher positions and reflexivity in supporting the expansion of culturally responsive approaches; they also do so while considering global sociopolitical conditions of this moment in time. The contributions to this volume were initially presented at the first biennial Advanced Methods Institute in 2021. The Institute was hosted by QualLab in The Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology and shared this volume’s thematic focus. As a handbook, the volume can help faculty and advanced researchers with interest in doing culturally responsive projects to better understand frameworks, approaches, and considerations for doing so. It includes activities to support readers in developing said understandings.

This book is a collection of feminist childhood studies stories from field research with educators, young children, and/or early childhood student-educators that explores the challenges, tensions, and possibilities of common worlds research methods for the 21st century. Grounded in a common worlding orientation, the contributing authors grapple with complex methodological understandings within postqualitative practices within settler colonial states: Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the Unites States. Each chapter presents a method the authors have put to work in their efforts to unsettle the interpretative power of Euro-Western developmental knowledges and anthropocentric frameworks to reimagine research amid the colonialist, social, and environmental challenges we face today. The research(ing) stories act as provocations for generating innovative, relational, and emergent methods to attend to the complexity of 21st-century childhoods. Just as developmental and sociological perspectives gave birth to new forms of inquiry within childhood studies in 19th-century industrialization and 20th-century urban change respectively, the 21st-century requires novel questions, practices, and methodologies to enhance the childhood studies lexicon. In the field ofchildhood studies, where settler colonial and neoliberal logics have so much clout, suchstrategies are crucial. Feminist Research for 21st-century Childhoods is an important and relevant read for anyone working and researching with children.