Rethinking Knowledge within Higher Education

Jan McArthur is Lecturer Education and Social Justice within the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, UK. She has previously taught at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and Monash University, Australia. Her research spans the nature and purposes of higher education, social justice within and through higher education and dialogue/student voice within assessment, learning and feedback.

A highly intelligent book in which the author brings her considerable scholarship to bear on crucial questions regarding the role and purpose of higher education. Her reading of Adorno is acute and nuanced and her application of 'critical theory' to the current higher education policy context is sharp and politically astute. McArthur's argument for the necessary relation between higher education and social justice is both compelling and inspiring.

• Introduction: Adorno and Higher Education1. Knowledge and Social Justice in Higher Education2. Approaches to Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy3. The Importance of Knowledge Being Not Easily Known4. Beyond Standardized Engagement with Knowledge5. The Social Implications of Engaging with Knowledge in Higher Education6. Challenging the Theory–Practice Dichotomy7. Towards a Higher Education Transcending Both the Elite and the MainstreamReferencesIndex