Doing Critical Educational Research: A Conversation with the Research of John Smyth reviewed by Melanie C. Brooks — October 21, 2015 Doing Critical Educational Research: A Conversation with the Research of John Smyth centers on the craftsmanship of doing critical qualitative research through the work of John Smyth. This monograph is unique in that it is not a how-to guidebook for those interested in conducting educational research. Rather, it is divided into four themes generated through Smyth’s life work, namely: teachers’ work, students’ lives, community engagement, and educational policy and leadership. Through these themes, the authors, Smyth, Down, McInerney, and Hattam present the intellectual doing of critical educational research. For Smyth, all research is political, and he calls for scholars to make clear their positions on the big issues shaping education today. As such, the topics presented push readers to question their assumptions, ask difficult questions, and actively engage in critical educational research. The first theme, teacher work, provides a historical and contextual overview of the influences shaping the work of teaching. Citing the work of Mills, Apple, Spring, Noddings, Giroux, among other critical theorists, this chapter lays the groundwork for future research by exploring the intersection between market-driven reforms and its influence on teacher work. Smyth posits that neoliberal policies have reduced the art of teaching to technical and passive processes that blame teachers—and by extension communities—rather than examining underlying causes of economic and social problems. He does not shy away from using harsh words to express his viewpoint on this neoliberalization of education, calling it "insidious," "odious," and a "cruel hoax." As a way to counteract market-driven reforms and educational myths, Smyth calls for the revival of the humanization of teaching. For Smyth, teacher work is politicized and teachers must push the conversation forward by authoring counter-narratives of “raising embarrassing questions” (p. 28) and pushing against neoliberal myths of competition, privatization, deficit ideologies, and meritocracy. For Smyth, the way forward is for teachers to embrace critically reflective practices, thereby visualizing new possibilities for schooling. It is this type of critical research practices that Smyth asserts will allow for the envisioning, and thus creation of, more equitable and socially just schools. The second theme, students' lives, focuses on the exclusion of student voice in market-driven education reform efforts along with the need to see how students respond to this exclusion. In the 1990s, Smyth’s views changed from aligning with authority and formal policy to becoming angry at the decline in student completion rates in South Australia. As a result, Smyth began a research agenda based on Agger’s (1992) “‘lifeworld-grounded critical theory’” (p. 42), advancing discourse centered on the concept of students’ early leaving as a political act. Smyth challenges the modalities of victim blaming and locating the problem in the individual and embraces Mills’s (1971) “sociologically mindful thinking” that calls scholars to deeply examine commonly held beliefs and truths, and to look at the underlying processes at play. Smyth employs student voice as a research methodology, raising the importance of listening to the experiences, thoughts, and actions of students in schools and advocating with them rather than for them. Smyth acknowledges the challenge of researching schools and the ambiguity of school culture, good teaching, successful students, effective leadership, decision-making processes, school-community relationships, and other normative terminology of schooling. Smyth approaches empirical research as a cartographer, critically “mapping” schools and developing extant theories of cultural reproduction. He emphasizes the agency teachers and students have in educational spaces. By using critical ethnography to explore the larger political policy influences, Smyth’s work creates needed space for researcher and student dialogue with the unashamed political aim of improving and re-imagining ways of ‘doing’ school. The third theme, community engagement, focuses on the importance of collaborative learning, examining power structures with the aim of advancing social justice and empowering marginalized communities for self-advocacy, self-governance, and self- determination. For Smyth, authentic participation and community capacity building are essential to rectifying inequitable schooling. Authentic participation goes beyond typical volunteering and fundraising programs by providing the opportunities for community members to engage in dialogue with schools about curricula, governance, policy, and other issues. Authentic participation fosters community capacity building by tapping into the strengths and assets present in communities, rather than focusing on deficits and systemic problems. In terms of research, Smyth’s application of critical ethnography to community Title: Doing Critical Educational Research: A Conversation with the Research of John Smyth Author(s): John Smyth, Barry Down, Peter McInerney, Robert Hattam Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing, New York ISBN: 1433123177, Pages: 193, Year: 2014 Search for book at Amazon.com