Alpesh Maisuria is Associate Professor of Education Policy in Critical Education, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Through underlabouring Marxism, his work examines the ideological and political drivers of policy decisions to critique the role and function of education in (re)producing forms of inequality. He has an extensive publications record, including the Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education (Brill 2022). Alpesh is the Joint Deputy Editor of Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS) and is the co-convenor of the Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues (MERD) seminar series (see the Facebook group). He is also Academic Parliamentary Fellow for the House Commons Library in the UK Parliament, and the American Education Research Association (AERA) Marxian and Society SIG Programme Chair.

Grant Banfield is Adjunct Lecturer, University of South Australia. He has been a teacher and university researcher/academic in Australian secondary schools and universities for over 40 years. His commitment throughout has been to the advancement of education as an emancipatory and revolutionary project. Grant's research, writing, and scholarship centre on exploring the relationship between realist philosophy of science and Marxian social theory and the possibilities this brings for ethical and transformative praxis. He is the author of Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education (Routledge 2016).

CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Journeys Through Critical Realism

Alpesh Maisuria and Grant Banfield

CHAPTER 2 A Detective, Physicist and Historian Walk into a Bar: Abduction, Retroduction and Retrodiction in Critical Realist Evaluations

Didier Boost, Björn Blom & Peter Raeymaeckers

CHAPTER 3 Bridging the Gap Between Philosophy and Empirical Research: A Critical Realist Methodology Using Quantitative Methods

Catherine Hastings

CHAPTER 4 Parent Engagement in Student Learning: Using Critical Realism to Uncover the Generative Mechanisms Needed for Teachers to Embrace Parent Engagement in their Teaching Practice

Catherine Quinn

CHAPTER 5 On the Anti-Imperialist Possibilities of Critical Realism

Omar Kaissi

CHAPTER 6Cobbling Together Methods for a Coherent Critical Realist Methodology: Searching for Mechanisms

Bree Weizenegger

CHAPTER 7 A Critical Realist Perspective on the 'Quality and Reform Dance' in the Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) Sector: The Road Less Travelled

Deborah Johnson

CHAPTER 8 The Utility of Critical Realism in Indigenous Research

Cassandra Diamond

CHAPTER 9 The Spatiality of School Choice - A Critical Realist Quantitative Geography of Education?

Anna-Maria Fjellman

CHAPTER 10 Real Men, Real Violence: Critical Realism and the Search for the Masculine Subject

Ben Wadham

CHAPTER 11 The Critical Realist Toolkit

Ellenah Mackie

CHAPTER 12 Journeys to Critical Realism: A Conversation about Spirituality, Love and Human Emancipation

Loretta Geuenich, Celina Valente, and Grant Banfield

CHAPTER 13 (A kind of) Conclusion - Against Full-Stops and Bookends?

Alpesh Maisuria and Grant Banfield

INDEX