Student Voice and Student Feedback: How Critical Pragmatism Can Reframe Research and Practice

This chapter recognises the diverse definitions and practices of student feedback; focussing on how student feedback can facilitate dialogue and thus contribute to the development of schools as democratic communities. Student feedback is thus positioned as a part of student voice, which has its roots in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 1989). We question the ways in which schools elicit the views of students and how students’ opinions are made use of, recognising the complexities arising from power relationships (Hart, 1992), the consumerisation of education (Whitty & Wisby, 2007) and the pressures of accountability. Furthermore, we consider ways in which researchers can address difficulties in the research-practice relationship (Chapman and Ainscow, 2019) and facilitate co-creation of research. We propose the perspective of critical pragmatism as a means to acknowledge the complexities of practice, whilst also highlighting the importance of critical reflection and dialogue. Critical pragmatism could move us from a “deconstructive scepticism toward a reconstructive imagination” (Forester, 2012, p. 6) in which schools and researchers collaborate to enable contextually rich practices of student feedback and student voice.

Eclecticism or exclusivity? The (critical) pragmatist ethos of (intersectional) analytic eclecticism

Eclecticism in International Relations (IR) claims to reject the rigid boundaries set by various theoretical traditions, yet, in practice, it falls short of moving the field “beyond paradigms” and tends to produce analytical exclusivity rather than eclecticism. This exclusivity is the result of Sil and Katzenstein’s investment in tenets of American pragmatism. These tenets favor consensus and universalism, leading to the reproduction and exclusivity of the theoretical status quo. Dissolving paradigmatic boundaries requires a more critical form of pragmatism. Drawing on the common origins of feminism and pragmatism paired with the contemporary feminist concept of intersectionality, this essay proposes a critical pragmatist ethos and an intersectional analytic eclecticism. This can produce a more inclusive form of analytic eclecticism and render visible the power dynamics that shape experiences as well as academic scholarship. Only when analytic eclecticism is informed by intersectionality and a critical pragmatism might it actually move IR “beyond paradigms.”

From Critical Theory to Critical Pragmatism: Capability and the Assessment of Freedom

This article discusses the implications of the double dimension of the capability concept, which is simultaneously normative and descriptive, in sustaining a critical approach toward freedom. Capability may provide a key concept for critical theory. It may also fuel critical pragmatism as anchored in committed empirical inquiry. Building on John Dewey’s pragmatist account, the article advocates a critical approach that is as much a matter of conceptual yardstick as of empirical inquiry. Taking reforms in the area of French continuing vocational training as a case in point, it demonstrates the analytical and critical power, when it comes to the idea of freedom, of a capability approach confronting three levels of inquiry that are usually investigated separately: the institutional (public policy) level, the organizational (in this case company) level, and the individual (biographical) level.