ABSTRACT
Critical realism is a methodological orientation that is relatively unknown in the fi elds of education and educational administration. When, as a developing educational scholar, I spent many months looking for a research methodology that best resonated with my sensibilities, it was due only to a happy accident that I was introduced to the critical realist’s perspective. I experienced an immediate affi nity with the tenets of critical realism, and I consequently found the absence of critical realist discourse in educational administration somewhat puzzling. The perspective has, admittedly, been criticized by some; however, such critical debate is common among adherents to a number of paradigms that continue to be robustly represented in administrative scholarship. I believe that the majority of critique with respect to critical realism is due to a misreading of the methodology as an intensely and, perhaps solely, theoretical perspective. Counter to this misunderstanding, my colleagues and I have found in critical realism a research orientation that inspires curiosity, theoretical rigour, and signifi cant practical utility.
