Education studies: an issue-based approach has been written to work across a wide range of reader stages and abilities, from undergraduate to postgraduate study, offering what the authors state is a critical and authoritative approach to the wide and diverse sub-topics that make up Education Studies as an academic subject. Covering 20 topics within 254 pages the authors have sought to challenge what they see as commonly accepted perspectives on education and ask the reader to question education in a thorough and critical manner, with a strong focus on the contexts of education in terms of political and socio-economic drivers, as well as issues of social and individual inclusivity.  Linked to these are further connections to citizenship and globalisation,  with the inclusion of globalisation acknowledged as a particular point of significance within the introduction. As the authors state, the text seeks to place discussions around education within what is becoming an increasingly uncertain landscape.

Certainly, it is difficult not to praise books that seek to make students question their preconceptions about education and raise the levels of criticality with which they approach the topic. Indeed, just the presence of 20 chapters, each on a different topic, must surely act to at least highlight the complexity of the field being studied and the breadth of knowledge that the reader will require to evidence a full understanding of education in all its forms. In this vein, I particularly value the inclusion of community and alternative education as a way of forcing students from their often limited view of learning as a lifelong and life-wide endeavour.

The intentions of the book are therefore to be applauded and certainly many of the authors have succeeded in their primary purpose to represent the depth and complexity of the field that the reader has chosen to engage with and ask them to see that field in a much more critical manner. However, concerns remain regarding the number of topics covered, the number of authors involved in producing the text, and the impact of those factors on the quality, consistency and criticality offered throughout the book as a whole. While the number of topics covered serves to highlight breadth within the field, the depth in which they are covered is quite variable and at times the structure of some chapters is a little fragmented and even confusing: lots of subsections but not always a clear intellectual route through them.

I would also query whether it is realistic to target so many learner groups in the same text, and would use the pitch at which some of the text has been levelled as an example of the problems that may be produced when doing so. Some chapters feel very much like traditional Educational Studies texts, built on straightforward historical explanations of policy and research, effective in explanation although perhaps a little dry to read, but in others, complicated themes and concepts are introduced without any attempt at genuine explanation.  For instance,  can a first-year undergraduate student be expected to understand concepts and terms such as 'non-linear principles of dynamical systems theory and chaos' (p. 18)? Similarly, will they necessarily understand the nature of 'meta-cognition', in this instance incorrectly clarified as 'learning to learn'? In these instances, I do feel some of the text fails to provide adequate foundational knowledge and therefore places too much responsibility on the student to search out additional information to help them understand comments made by the author. Again this is a matter of consistency, or indeed inconsistency, and how the novice learner, in particular, will respond to it as a challenge to either accept or reject it as a useful text.

In a similar vein, I would suggest that such examples also serve to highlight another concern with some authors in this book, in that their writing reads as opinion and that where they have undoubtedly reached their conclusions critically that process isn't made explicitly clear to the reader. This surely limits the ability of the text to act as an exemplar to the student coming to criticality as a novice. Again, as an example, we cannot argue with the statement that systems theory has been applied to education, but can certainly question whether it has been useful. The question remains as to whether the lack of validation supports or hinders the reader’s willingness to critically challenge the point being made.

Sound in intent and largely effective in content, this book highlights the problems associated with raising criticality in students. As with all books of this type, questions remain regarding the quantity of background information required to drive criticality; the assumptions of previous learning; levels of terminology; and the ability of authors to promote criticality of their own thinking. Here, I feel that these questions have gathered significance through a focus that has proved a little too broad and inconsistencies in writing style and structure that may challenge the engagement of the novice learner in particular.

Reviewed by Mark Tymms, De Montfort University

Cite as:
Review by (Mark Tymms) (2015) 'Education studies: an issue based approach' Research in Teacher Education, Vol 5 (No.No.2), 47–50.