UW–Madison’s Michael Apple is receiving the 2018 Article of the Year Award from Educational Review.
This honor is for his essay, “Rightist gains and critical scholarship,” which was published by the journal in January 2018. The award is selected by the national editorial board of the Educational Review.
The abstract for this article explains: “In this essay, I first discuss where the article ‘Doing Things the “Right” Way’ that was published in this journal in 2005 fits into my corpus of work. In many ways, it represents a coming together of the various influences that have continued to form me over the nearly five decades I have been engaged in critically examining the relationship between educational theories, policies and practices, and differential power.” 
The abstract continues: “Like many others, my work has been guided by two major goals: understanding and interrupting dominance. This has required that we become more nuanced in our critical analyses of the dynamics of power and the agents who wield it and that we not be satisfied with simplistic slogans that may be effective for rallying opposition but are much less effective at determining tactics and spaces of possibility. Thus, my aim is not only to both grasp and counter dominant policies and practices, but also to engage in fraternal criticism of what I take to be overly simplistic work by some parts of the Left as well. Given the increasing power of neoliberal, neoconservative, authoritarian populist and new managerial policies in education and the larger society, I next critically examine how and why the Right is ascendant. Finally, I detail a range of crucial tasks in which the critical scholar/activist in education should engage if we are to respond to these conditions in politically and ethically robust ways.”
The Article of the Year Award originated in 2013 and is now an annual event. The criteria for selection are that the article will: communicate research findings or scholarly discussion with exemplary clarity; show potential for challenging and/or changing the nature of discourse — that is, the way that education researchers conceive a problem and scope possible solutions; and show promise for making an original and lasting contribution on a topic of interest to educators.
Apple, who is widely known for conducting groundbreaking work as one of the leading founders of the field of critical curriculum studies, is the John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction, and Educational Policy Studies.