Critical Theoretical Framework Research Articles

Developing an Anti-Racist Practice in Occupational Therapy: Guidance for the Occupational Therapist

A strong anti-racist practice is critical for occupational therapists who represent an overwhelmingly white and female workforce yet serve people from all ethnic and racial backgrounds. These therapists are commonly unprepared to work with a racially diverse clientele because of a lack of reflective and critical practice grounded in anti-racism. This article provides some critical literature about race and racism in occupational science. We present important concepts for therapists to deepen their understanding of anti-racist practice, including intersectionality, agent and target groups, and equity and equality. We then explore some critical theoretical frameworks that can help conceptualize anti-racist practice, such as cycle of socialization, the 4 I’s of oppression, window of tolerance, systems theory, cultural humility, and somatic racism. We conclude with intervention strategies informed by these frameworks that therapists can use to strengthen their anti-racist practice. These interventions include journaling, race caucusing, deepening relationships, deep listening, body awareness, and somatic healing. We hope that these concepts, critical frameworks, and intervention strategies can help occupational therapists develop a sustained anti-racist practice that will greatly benefit and support the people they serve.

A Path Forward: Critically Examining Practitioners' Role in Addressing Campus Racial Climate

A Path Forward:Critically Examining Practitioners' Role in Addressing Campus Racial Climate Kaleb L. Briscoe (bio), Crystal E. Garcia (bio), and Ashley L. Swift (bio) Student affairs professionals (SAPs) have long grappled with the pervasiveness of whiteness within predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Whiteness is "a normative structure in society that marginalizes People of Color and privileges White people" (Cabrera et al., 2017, p. 18). Whiteness, which often reinforces systemic racism, directly affects how institutional history, culture, and racial climate are shaped (Gusa, 2010). Yet how whiteness operates is not always obvious. As Ahmed (2007) described, "We need to examine not only how bodies become white, or fail to do so, but also how spaces can take on the very 'qualities' that are given to such bodies" (p. 156). Ahmed's work emphasized how whiteness affects environments and how People of Color can be vastly harmed and deemed invisible in such spaces. The influence of whiteness on campus spaces is perhaps unsurprising, given that SAPs often normalize ideologies and practices around whiteness (Cabrera et al., 2016, 2017). Whiteness is often demonstrated in how SAPs advocate (or not) for Students of Color and respond to racialized incidents that occur all too often within campus communities. Indeed, racialized incidents, "problematic and derogatory actions and behaviors that promote negative stereotypes and send negative messages to marginalized groups" (Garcia et al., 2011, p. 8), operate under the guise of whiteness—a reality the field of student affairs rarely discusses. In this paper, we bring together our perspectives to offer insight into how whiteness informs SAPs' response to racialized incidents and advocacy for Students of Color. We explicitly speak to SAPs in student involvement roles, as we all have experience studying and working in these functional areas. Dr. Kaleb Briscoe is a Black cisgender woman and assistant professor of higher educational leadership. As a scholar, Kaleb's work problematizes oppressed and marginalized populations within higher education through critical theoretical frameworks and qualitative methodological approaches. She explicitly focuses on interrogating issues of race, racism, and racialized incidents and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Dr. Crystal Garcia is a Latina and white cisgender woman and assistant professor of educational administration. Her research focuses on the mechanisms through which racially minoritized students experience campus environments, with a particular focus on sorority and fraternity life (SFL). Ashley Swift is a Black, cisgender woman and member [End Page 588] of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated. She currently serves as an assistant director for the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life at a PWI. Through research and practice, we have given much thought to the ways whiteness informs how student involvement SAPs respond to racialized incidents and offer suggestions for practitioners moving forward. THE PROBLEM: WHITENESS Whiteness is Embedded in Everything Whiteness is pervasive in all aspects of higher education and student affairs, especially student involvement (Beatty & Garcia, 2022; Briscoe & Jones, in press). In Kaleb's work on SAPs' experiences with campus racial climate at PWIs (see Briscoe, 2022), she found that SAPs who work in SFL, campus activities, and student organizations acknowledged that when racialized incidents occurred, institutional leaders often engaged with the campus community from a "business as usual" mindset. There was an expectation that SAPs of Color, often Black SAPs, would counsel Students of Color through these issues, yet their white peers were not asked to do this labor. Even further, the burden of racism caused SAPs of Color to experience racial battle fatigue. Indeed, campus administrators do not consider how these practices uplift whiteness and harm staff; instead, staff are asked to be on the ground during racialized incidents with little to no training. Understanding Color Evasiveness in Student Involvement Researchers have described the concept of color evasiveness as intentional efforts by white people to avoid recognizing the ways race is weaponized to create systems that privilege whiteness (Annamma et al., 2017). All too often, SAPs engage in color evasiveness, particularly when racialized incidents occur on campus, by avoiding responding to the issue or by communicating broad statements that do not name acts of hate and discrimination. Rarely do these statements directly name the actions as racist or recognize that these are not individual...

Holding Up a Democratic Facade: How 'New Work Organizations' Avoid Resistance and Litigation When Dismissing Their Managers.

New work is used as a general term to summarize professional developments in contemporary work style, structure and modus of organizations and society—this means collaborative work and flexible working hours on individual levels, and flat hierarchies and participatory decision-making on organizational levels. Contemporary corporations strive to orient toward the concept of new work to keep up with stakeholder demands, for instance in their branding strategies as an employer. However, studies on organizational practices indicate that alongside explicit values and agendas, organizations tend to slyly exert power to secure their (economic) interests. Constructive dismissal is one such instance where contractually protected employees are made to resign their positions because the work environment is altered to become increasingly unbearable. This research analyzes two case studies to explicate routine dismissal procedures at the managerial level in two internationally operating German corporations. Both corporations explicitly profile as new work environments and are structured according to democratic principles including flat hierarchies, feature institutionalized diversity management including control committees for equal opportunities, and emphasize values such as workplace dignity, employee agency, and equality. The data contain long-term participatory observation collected over a 6-month period from two managers of 5 and 8 years of experience in managerial duties. The content analysis of data reveals characteristics of everyday processes in these organizations especially in terminating managers. The findings are presented as the ‘model of the silent dismissal,’ containing seven types of managerial termination carried out by implicit power and symbolic conventions that circumvent subject participation and litigation in an effortless manner. After exposing the model’s mechanisms, we turn to discuss its meaning for both terminated and surviving subjects against a critical theoretical framework of neoliberalism, democracy, and power.

Incorporating Intersectionality as a Framework for Equity-Minded Tobacco Control Research: A Call for Collective Action Toward a Paradigm Shift.

To eliminate tobacco-related disparities, tobacco control research would benefit from a paradigm shift. Intersectionality, a framework pioneered by Kimberlé Crenshaw in late 1980s, has the potential to improve our understanding of why and how certain social groups are disproportionately harmed by commercial tobacco use, and improve our ability to address persistent tobacco-related health disparities. In this commentary, we outline the rationale and recommendations for incorporating intersectionality into equity-minded tobacco control research. These recommendations arose from intersectionality webinars organized by the Health Disparities (now Health Equity) Network of the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT) in 2019 and 2020. Specifically, we propose that eliminating tobacco-related disparities through intersectionality-informed research requires a multilevel, multipronged approach. We summarize priority actions for the tobacco control research field to achieve health equity through the intersectionality framework including acknowledging that structural factors, racism and power dynamics shape lived experiences, integrating critical theoretical frameworks and intersectionality scholarship into research questions, and embracing collaborative community-based approaches at every level of the research process. Through these actions, our field can take concrete steps to fundamentally improve our approach to conducting research to achieve health equity. Intersectionality is a valuable tool to align our field with our pursuit of health equity. The recommendations aim to improve methods of equity-focused tobacco control, prompt ongoing dialogue on the utility of this tool, and shift paradigms in how the research process is conducted at every level among stakeholders, including researchers, journal editors and reviewers, funders, practitioners, and policy makers.

Beyond "heartfelt condolences": A critical take on mainstream psychology's responses to anti-Black police brutality.

Anti-Black police brutality in the United States is not a new problem, but at least a 400-year old one. Mainstream psychology has responded to this critical racial and social justice issue by conceptualizing it primarily as an outcome of police officers' social cognition (e.g., threat perceptions) or implicit racial biases. Such individualistic and cognitive perspectives, however, ignore the fundamental role of anti-Black structural racism in facilitating the ability of law enforcement to terrorize, brutalize, and kill Black people with impunity. As with the media and public attention, mainstream psychology has also tended to frame acts of anti-Black police brutality as outliers, or occasional lethal and spectacular events, rather than as a broad spectrum of routine acts that structure policing and police brutality as a world for Black people in the United States. Informed by critical psychology, and the critical theoretical frameworks of critical race theory, intersectionality, and Afro-Pessimism, the goal of this article is to critically engage with the topic of anti-Black police brutality. By critically engage, we mean expose and challenge the economic, social, and material power relations that disproportionately expose Black people to police brutality; and conceptualize police brutality not as a series of aberrant incidents, but as a structure that in essence constructs and reifies Blackness and Whiteness. We also introduce the Anti-Black Police Brutality Continuum, a conceptual framework of police brutality as a broad spectrum of routine manifestations of anti-Black structural racism, and criticize mainstream psychology's deferral of a critical and transformative response to anti-Black police brutality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Critical perspectives on Black students’ success

AbstractIn this chapter, we explore the research literature on Black college students’ success and apply critical theoretical frameworks to reimagine how college student educators and administrators can promote a more holistic approach to student success. Scholars and researchers have focused on identifying how and why Black students succeed or not, and have illustrated a number of common experiences Black students endure in traditionally white institutions (TWIs). Less common but centrally important, however, are accounts and interpretations of Black students’ experiences that center Blackness, especially in intersectional ways. We offer three recommendations that stand to inform institutional practices and perhaps inspire continued scholarship related to Black students and their postsecondary success.

Transnational labour solidarity and the question of agency: A social dialectical approach to the field

ABSTRACT The study of labour transnationalism remains theoretically underdeveloped. Taking this as a starting point, I focus specifically on the need to develop a critical theoretical framework for understanding different forms of transnational labour practices. This type of framework is necessary if we want, as Peter Waterman suggests, to recentre the emancipatory dimensions of transnational labour solidarities. This, I argue, means grappling with the complexities and contradictions shaping how solidarities are built and unmade. I suggest that we can elaborate on the critical paradigm proposed by Rebecca Johns that contrasts different forms of transnational solidarities and labour imperialism. Focusing on the problem of labour imperialism, I show how a dialectical materialist analysis, with attention to the social dimensions of class, can provide insights into how different forms of transnational solidarities develop.

Principles of antiracist social emotional justice learning

ABSTRACT COVID-19 has increased the emphasis on social emotional learning (SEL) in our schools. Unfortunately, the current approaches to SEL can often perpetuate racial hierarchies, apply a deficit lens toward students, and emphasize the need for student-level change while ignoring the historical, social, and cultural influences that created and actively maintain oppressive environments through which students are required to navigate. Therefore, the authors offer an Antiracist Social Emotional Justice Learning (ASEJL) approach for educators to apply to promote freedom and justice for students through empowerment, hope, and joy. The AEJL approach emphasizes applying Critical Theoretical Frameworks, Anti-Bias Building Blocks, Student and Family Voice, Strengths Based Empowerment, and Homeplace to combat the current colorblind approach to SEL while cultivating the interests and talents of students and families from diverse backgrounds.

Taking a Critical Look at Adolescent Research on Black Girls and Women: A Systematic Review

In the field of adolescent development, the language, theoretical frameworks, methods for collecting and analyzing data, and ways of interpretation that researchers use may advance notions of white supremacy and perpetuate racist ideas. Understanding how researchers study Black girls and women, in particular, is a critical step in working toward the production of science and knowledge that promotes an anti-racist and anti-sexist agenda and centers the voices of historically marginalized adolescents. Accordingly, we engaged in a systematic review (k = 48) with the goal of taking a critical look at how researchers study Black girls and women. Our synthesis of empirical articles from four prominent adolescent research journals published between 2010 and 2020 revealed themes related to (a) a dearth of critical theoretical frameworks, (b) a lack of acknowledgment of the intersectional experiences of Black girls and women, (c) differences in how researchers incorporate ethnic/racial information, (d) the use of a deficit perspective, and (e) the dominance of quantitative designs. We discuss these themes and conclude with recommendations for incorporating critical frameworks and more varied methodologies, issuing a call for adolescent development scholars to take a deeper, asset-based, and more critical approach to studying Black girls and their development.

Feeling Black: A Conversation About Justice Imperatives in Education, Disability, and Health

The purpose of this paper is to engage the reader in a conversation about justice imperatives in education, disability, and health. As counternarrative to structured majoritarian scholarship and positioned in the expressed intent of the National Academy of Kinesiology’s 90th annual meeting theme of Kinesiology’s Social Justice Imperative, we express feelings about the urgency for social justice in teacher education. To start, we operationally define social justice as advocacy, agency, and action. Next, we recommend the application of critical theoretical frameworks in conceptualizing and conducting research involving historically marginalized and minoritized populations (e.g., African American students). This conversation is theoretically grounded in intersectionality to offer a nuanced understanding of social constructions, such as ethnicity (e.g., African American) and race (e.g., Black), gender, culture, disability, and sociometric positioning regarding justice imperatives in education, disability, and health.

Preparing Teachers for Culturally Responsive/Relevant Pedagogy (CRP): A Critical Review of Research

Context: Proposed more than two decades ago, culturally relevant/responsive teaching or pedagogy (CRP) is one promising approach to transforming the education experience of historically marginalized groups. The development of CRP has since inspired changes in teacher education programs and resulted in considerable research on preparing teachers for CRP. However, critics have argued that much work on CRP has not fulfilled its transformative potential of addressing racism and the white-supremacist foundations underlying teacher education research and practice and have urged CRP research to grow from the existing knowledge base and to innovate. Purpose of Study: This study critically examines the research practices of empirical studies on preparing K-12 preservice teachers for CRP in the United States by merging ideas of research as social practice with critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, and Indigenous epistemologies to argue for research as racialized social practice. The goal is to provide perspectives and lines of research that are true to the radical shifts the original theories called for, yet might not have been fully fulfilled. Research Design: This critical literature review applies the research-as-racialized-social-practice lens to examine how CRP research studies frame problems and research questions, elaborate theoretical frameworks and research methodology, and discuss findings and implications. Our analysis positions CRP research on the research-as-racialized-social-practice continuum, ranging from maintaining the racist status quo to intentionally disrupting it. Findings: Our analysis reveals that dominant research practices—emphasizing the problem of individual deficiencies rather than inequitable systems, employing a research logic focusing on linearity rather than complexity, and lacking in-depth examination of racialized and cultural ways of knowing for both researchers and participants—maintain the inequitable status quo rather than disrupting taken-for-granted assumptions and practices. While we recognize the important work and useful knowledge accumulated by this body of literature over two decades, we urge teacher educators and researchers to stay vigilant and resist research epistemologies and practices that recenter, recycle, and maintain whiteness, perpetuating the racist status quo. Conclusions: We recommend that teacher education researchers can construct research questions capable of generating new knowledge to disrupt racial injustice; utilize and further develop critical theoretical frameworks that sufficiently attend to various aspects of race and racism in teaching, learning, and society, and are meaningfully linked to disruptive research methodologies; and, finally, attend clearly to the ability of research to disrupt the racist status quo within their findings and implications.

Hauntological Pedagogies: Confronting the Ghosts of Whiteness and Moving towards Racial and Spiritual Justice

The purpose of this conceptual article is to bring critical theoretical frameworks and discourses used in educational research on leadership, pedagogy, and policy into conversation with literature on hauntology. Furthermore, this work aims to pursue avenues for theorizing and developing notions of hauntological pedagogies by evoking the language and imagery of ghosts to confront the political, social, and spiritual problems in U.S. schooling contexts that stem from whiteness. This article is grounded in the critical discourses of antiracism, BlackCrit, critical pedagogy, critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, decolonial studies, and TribalCrit. By juxtaposing historical and contemporary case studies in U.S. schooling, this study demonstrates that whiteness, apart from constituting a socially constructed set of power relations, takes on religious or spiritual qualities. Critical educational researchers and practitioners will benefit from engaging with this work as it can help them conceive of and strive for more epistemologically, racially, and spiritually just schooling environments.

Re-imagining Digital Technology in Education through Critical and Neo-materialist Insights

Technological determinism, techno-solutionism and instrumental perspectives on technologies have populated educational research literature in the last decades, and even more since the pandemic crisis has started. This essay offers a critique about simplistic explanations of technology adoption in pedagogy by using insights from critical philosophy of technology and feminist new materialism. It rejects the assumption of teachers’ resistance to change and proposes a frame to expand future imaginaries of education. In this sense, critical studies provide a focus on human activity as interconnected with social and situated knowledges/practices. The emphasis is on recursive relations that allow educational researchers and practitioners to take into account the considerable complexity of digital technologies pedagogical adoption. On the other hand, feminist new materialism brings about a new focus on relational ontology, which adds to the critical theoretical framework the agentic element. By overcoming a binary way of seeing technologies through utopias and dystopias, new materialist studies focus on ethics and responsibility. We argue that we need both a critical and a neo-materialist view, in order to adopt technologies in education in meaningful, productive and creative ways. Building on small narratives and possible utopias can take us to re-design and re-interprete the future of educational technologies.

Changing Worlds, Changing Classrooms: Satellite Children and their Teachers in the Transnational Era

The challenges for immigrants in the US and Canada include the difficulties of making a living while raising their children. Due to the high cost of living and childcare in cities, along with the realities of low paying jobs and long working hours among many working-class immigrants, growing numbers of families send their infant children to their countries of origin to be raised by relatives for a few years. When the children reach school age, they are returned to their parents in the US. Prior research has focused on immigrant parents’ decision-making rationale and their reports of adjustments that children went through. Informed by a critical theoretical framework and culturally sustaining pedagogy, this paper investigates elementary school teachers’ understandings of the transnational experiences of their Chinese “satellite children.” Interview data from a qualitative study at an East Coast urban school serving a growing Chinese community, where this transnational practice is the norm, reveal challenges and opportunities that the return of these children presents for their parents, their teachers, and for the children themselves. We argue that a culturally sustaining approach is critically needed to better serve this community and student population.

Urban School District Performance: A Longitudinal Analysis of Achievement

We used the Stanford education data archive (SEDA) data to examine the heterogeneity among urban school districts in the United States. The SEDA 2.1 includes data sets on students’ mathematics (Math) and English language arts (ELA) achievement from 2008 to 2014 at the district level. Growth mixture modeling was used to uncover the underlying growth trajectories for urban student achievement from the third to the eighth grade. Two and three growth patterns were observed for ELA and Math achievement, respectively, over time. We used the critical theoretical framework QuantCrit to centralize race in the analysis of the data and shared implications for future research.

Seeing the Window, Finding the Spider: Applying Critical Race Theory to Medical Education to Make Up Where Biomedical Models and Social Determinants of Health Curricula Fall Short.

A professional and moral medical education should equip trainees with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively advance health equity. In this Perspective, we argue that critical theoretical frameworks should be taught to physicians so they can interrogate structural sources of racial inequities and achieve this goal. We begin by elucidating the shortcomings in the pedagogic approaches contemporary Biomedical and Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) curricula use in their discussion of health disparities. In particular, current medical pedagogy lacks self-reflexivity; encodes social identities like race and gender as essential risk factors; neglects to examine root causes of health inequity; and fails to teach learners how to challenge injustice. In contrast, we argue that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a theoretical framework uniquely adept at addressing these concerns. It offers needed interdisciplinary perspectives that teach learners how to abolish biological racism; leverage historical contexts of oppression to inform interventions; center the scholarship of the marginalized; and understand the institutional mechanisms and ubiquity of racism. In sum, CRT does what biomedical and SDOH curricula cannot: rigorously teach physician trainees how to combat health inequity. In this essay, we demonstrate how the theoretical paradigms operationalized in discussions of health injustice affect the ability of learners to confront health inequity. We expound on CRT tenets, discuss their application to medical pedagogy, and provide an in-depth case study to ground our major argument that theory matters. We introduce MedCRT: a CRT-based framework for medical education, and advocate for its implementation into physician training.

Pandemonium, panic and the pandemic: implications for human resource development from an unplanned shift to online learning

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the experiences of a high school senior, a doctoral student, a university professor and an online academic coach with a rapid, unplanned shift to online learning in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand the challenges and distinct skills they identify as essential for success in a 100% virtual learning environment.Design/methodology/approachThrough scholarly personal narratives (SPNs), the researchers shared details and authentic knowledge regarding their experiences and perceptions of successful teaching and learning in a 100% online learning environment.FindingsThe main goal was to identify necessary skills for success in a 100% virtual learning environment resulting from an unplanned shift. The findings show a need for learner and teacher self-directedness in developing a variety of nontraditional, critical literacies.Originality/valueIn light of the imposed and unplanned educational shifts in teaching and learning, this study has strong practical implications for human resource development offered through an analysis of multiple perspectives. This research may lead to a better understanding of how, in a period of rapid, unexpected shifts, individuals need to use self-directedness to leverage personal and professional development opportunities to adapt and succeed in the new environment. Additionally, the authors use an innovative critical theoretical framework to outline the skills the participants report as useful for success in an online classroom during a period of rapid, unexpected shifting.

Social Justice in Kinesiology, Health, and Disability

ABSTRACT The current state of research in kinesiology scholarship is largely void of empirical research that counters deficit thinking from a social justice perspective. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the social justice agenda in kinesiology, and to suggest directions for the future of social justice research in our fields. First, we offer clarification of social justice and discuss how researchers might challenge dominant (majoritarian) discourses through critical interrogation of oppression and privilege, particularly in the United States (U.S.). We further suggest the utilization of a critical theoretical framework in conducting research and in challenging the prevalent deficit orientation of research engaging historically and contemporarily marginalized U.S. populations (e.g., people of color, women, and individuals with disabilities). Even more importantly, the lens through which the research is viewed must be adjusted to fully grasp the pertinent issues.

Outdoor Physical Activity During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic. A Comparative Analysis of Government Restrictions in Italy, France, and Germany.

Introduction: Mandated restrictions on outdoor physical activity (PA) during the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the lifeworld of millions of people and led to a contradictory situation. On the one hand, PA was perceived as risky behaviour, as it might facilitate transmission of the virus. On the other hand, while taking precautions, regular PA was an important tool to promote the population's health during the lockdown.Methods: This paper examines the differences in government restrictions on PA in France, Germany, and Italy during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw on techniques of qualitative content analysis and apply a critical theoretical framework to assess the countries' restrictions on PA.Results: Our analysis shows that the restrictions on PA varied in the three countries, in all three countries. This variance is attributed both to differences in the timing and severity of the pandemic in the countries analysed, as well as to the divergence in the relationships between the countries' sport and health systems.Conclusion: At the national level, the variance in restrictions on PA reflect the differences in the spread of the coronavirus and in the health systems' understanding of and approach to PA. The global scientific discourse on the pandemic represents a further key influencing factor. The management of the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated that the extreme complexity of societies in terms of public health, politics, and the economy pose challenges and unsolvable contradictions.

Contextualizing the Past to Guide the Future: Situating Three Critical Theoretical Frameworks for Educational Culture

Background: The engineering education research community has increasingly acknowledged the importance of addressing equity and inclusion. Qualitative research approaches have a unique power to reform classroom practice, create empathy for students, understand context, and point towards new paradigms and solutions. In our work, we have found critical social theories provide useful ways of looking at, critiquing, and reimagining inequitable educational settings. However, many scholars theory in a limited way with theory, treating it as a utilitarian choice rather than requiring deep engagement. Without careful consideration of the situated historical context for a theory’s origin, we can distort its original purpose. Purpose: This paper highlights funds of knowledge, cultural production, and cultural construction as three prominent theoretical frameworks for educational culture. Following the methodological approach of historicizing, we recontextualize the present use of the theoretical frameworks by better understanding their historical context. Scope: We introduce each of the three frameworks and present an account of the history of the origins of the frameworks, emphasizing the context within which the originators found themselves and what problems they saw themselves as addressing. Next, we discuss how it is currently being leveraged in US engineering education or related fields, noting perceived problems or patterns related to the application of theory. Finally, we consider the differences between the past and the present contexts to help guide future use of the framework, noting what lessons we can take away from the past that speak to issues in the present. Conclusion: We compare the nuanced differences between the frameworks and call on readers to make a more careful and less casual choice regarding theory. We also note the importance of considering historicity, situatedness, and reflexivity when deeply engaging with research on educational culture and critical theoretical approaches.