ABSTRACT
The purpose of this book is to develop the practical elements of educational criticism, a form of qualitative inquiry that takes its lead from the work that critics have done in fields such as the visual arts, music, literature, drama, and dance. Largely conceptualized by Stanford professor Elliot Eisner (1933-2014),1 the method is utilized worldwide. This approach is sometimes called educational criticism and connoisseurship. In the chapters that follow, we will make distinctions between criticism and connoisseurship; however, for the sake of convenience, we will usually use the shorthand terms educational criticism or simply criticism in referring to this particular species of qualitative research. We also note that at times we refer to the researcher as the critic and at other times as the researcher. We use the terms interchangeably.
