Getting critical about critique in higher education: provocations on the meanings of ‘Critical Perspectives’

Abstract

This Point of Departure 'kicks off' a process that we hope will elicit submissions for a Special Issue to mark the 30 th anniversary of Teaching in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives. The theme of the issue will be to debate the meanings of the concept 'cri�cal' or 'cri�cality' or 'cri�que' and its associated uses such as 'cri�cal perspec�ves', 'cri�cal thinking' and 'cri�cal literacy' in higher educa�on and the implica�ons of these debates for teaching. We will invite contributors to interrogate the defini�ons, uses and import of these terms, par�cularly in the context of conduc�ng and wri�ng about research on teaching theory and prac�ce in higher educa�on for this journal. Despite its pervasiveness in higher educa�on discourse, the meanings of the concept remain vague and implicit, such that they can func�on as mechanisms of exclusion and domina�on, for example when assessing students (Stables 2003, Gravet, Taylor and Fairchild 2021, Taylor, Cranham et al. 2023 or reviewing submissions for publica�on Romano 2023, Taylor, Cranham et al. 2023). More specifically, we hope to clarify for ourselves and for poten�al authors how we might meaningfully rethink and redescribe the concept in contemporary higher educa�on contexts that are shi�ing and unstable -at many levels -existen�al, ins�tu�onal, disciplinary, epistemological, technological, cultural and planetary. As editors and reviewers of the journal, we also hope that contribu�ons to the Special Issue will challenge not only how we teach, but also how we frame and manage the journal and thus open up, enrich, and diversify our coverage of research on teaching that adopts a cri�cal perspec�ve. ContextBy sta�ng in its purpose and scope, that it hopes to be responsive to its shi�ing global and local contexts, Teaching in Higher Education follows Paulo Freire's well-known adage that reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies con�nually (re)reading the world (Freire & Macedo, 1987). A key ques�on then becomes, through what lens do we re-read the world? Below we touch on a few pressure points that we (the authors) think are important as we try to reread the contemporary situa�on.