The Critical Turn in Education

Isaac Gottesman's 2016 intellectual history of how critical theory entered education scholarship — tracing the path from the Frankfurt School and Gramsci through Paulo Freire to the proliferation of critical frameworks in education research.

Genealogy of critical education: Gottesman traces the intellectual history of critical theory's entry into American education: the Frankfurt School's influence (Marcuse, Adorno), Gramsci's hegemony concept, Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, and the subsequent proliferation of critical race theory, feminist pedagogy, and queer theory in education. The book is valuable as a clear historical account of how these ideas entered mainstream education scholarship — useful for both proponents (who see it as a legitimate intellectual tradition) and critics (who see it as a concerted ideological project).