Encoouraged by the number of downloads of Critical School Geogaphy, I decided in 2024 to write an as yet untitled ebook on critical realism, the philosphy of knowledge on which the earlier book is based. I am currently (summer 2026) revising and editing the chapters described and downloadable below. I have added an introductory chapter and will add a chapter on AI and AI competency as chpater three. Consequently you may be confused by the numbering of a chapter you download., This issue will be resolved as chapters are renumbered when they are compiled into the finished ebook. I hope to pubish that here by the end of the year.
Meanwhile if you find the chapters useful please tell your colleagues and networks about them. If you have comments or corrections please contact me
Critical realism is introduced via a survey of sixteen year olds’ beliefs about politics, the media and the issues shaping their lives. Its aim of universal human flourishing is linked to Critical School Geography’s rationale before the chapter outlines sigificant changes to the global and UK political economy since 2020. The populist right and left are engaged in culture wars and offer contrasing analyses and solutions to the global polycrisis based on digital technology that should feature in the geography curriculum as it seeks to develop radical global citizens. While the 2025 review of the English natioanl curriculum failed to offer reform, Burnham’ s emerging political economy and his desire to balance academic and vocational routes for secondary students offer school geography new challenges and opportunities.The associated curriculum challenge focuses on students’ standpoints or outlooks on the world.
Critical realism’s ontology claims that reality is a layered system of structures and mechanism with social system resting on bio-physical systems and their mechanisms causing events that we may or may not experience. This chapter explains the systemic and dialectical nature of the world, the laws it obeys, and the similarities and differences between social and natural systems. Marxist political economy models critical realism’ ontology and the chapter reviews post-neoliberal models (degrowth, decolonial, foundational) that offer the prospect of living within planetary limits in ways that give greater attention to human needs and capabilities. Such models are relevant to geography curriculum that seeks to address sustainability and climate change, and the curriculum challenge is to develop a unit enabling students to design a future energy utopia for the UK.
Chapter AI and AI competency
This chapter introduces generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the ways in which critical theorists seek to understand their use and potentials by developing models of digital capitalism and socialism. It then introduces the global race for AGI and its impact on geopolitics before examining the UK government’s policies on AI, including its role in schooling and impact on school geography. Google’s Gemini assistant is used to help the author compare mainstream and critical approaches to AI in education before UNESCO’s AI competency frameworks for teachers and students are introduced. The associated curriculum challenge requires readers to apply these frameworks to the development of a curriculum unit on climate AI.
Chapter Epistemology
Critical realism combines ontological realism with epistemological relativism and provides a firm foundation for a socially critical geography curriculum that is superior to those offered by positivism and interpretivism. While social realism and its notion of powerful knowledge is a product of the knowledge turn in curriculum theory that has gained much influence, its critics employ critical realism to oppose its rejection of standpoint theory and everyday knowledge and its neglect of ethics and social justice. Their arguments support a reframing of the geography curriculum that allows students to extend and refine their knowledge as critical pedagogy prompts dialogue between everyday knowledge, academic knowledge, and the knowledges of the powerful and the powerless. The chapter concludes by assessing whether the 2025 review of the national curriculum for England is likely to support such reframing.
Critical realist’s research methodology seeks to discover the structures and mechanisms in the real domain that cause events and experiences in the actual and empirical domains. This chapter outlines the main elements of such research that finds application in curriculum development, critical pedagogy, and community development. Such application is illustrated by reference to Banfield’s model of socialist pedagogy that seeks to develop students’ standpoints in ways that foster class consciousness. The relations between class and other forms of oppression are explored through a critical realist reading of intersectionality theory before the focus turns to economic planning from below that has the potential to empower the working class. The use of ChatGPT as a teachers’ assistant reveals AI’s potential to suggest activities on co-operatives which incorporate the context + mechanism + outcome formula of critical realism. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the likely impact of AI on teacher professionalism.
Chapter Structure and Agency
The dualism of structure and agency is like other dualisms, one that critical realism seeks to collapse. It does this by ascribing new meanings to the two concepts via models of social transformation, the agent’s position within the social system, social interaction, and the multi-scaled nature of social reality. These models are outlined before further examination of social and cultural structures leads to consideration of the role of discourse in social transformation and critical realist approaches to critical discourse analysis. Such analysis has been used to explore discourses of sustainability and the literature of sustainable global citizenship. This had led Granados-Sánchez to outline the dimensions of such citizenship and their implications for global citizenship education. The chapter concludes by revisiting Critical School Geographyand its coverage of such citizenship in the light of Mouffe’s 2022 text proposing a green democratic revolution.
Chapter The Philosophy of meta-Reality
Bhaskar’s later work on critical realism took a spiritual turn, focussing on the ontology of persons and suggesting that we have a ground state of unity, love and spontaneous right action that connects us to all other beings. His philosophy of meta-Reality suggests that we are currently cut off or ‘split’ from this ground state by the alienation, illusions, and disempowerment caused by current social structures. Reconnecting to our ground state and thereby realising a higher moral state of being (non-duality), is key to developing empathy and solidarity with others, the re-enchantment of the world, the realisation of radical global citizenship, and social emancipation. School geography can aid the development of non-dual beings in ways that this chapter outlines.
John Huckle - Educating for Sustainability 