Anyon's recent work has involved a number of collaborations with her doctoral students in the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education at The Graduate Center. The principle example of this is the 2009 text, "Theory and Educational Research: Toward Critical Social Explanation". Here, Anyon reflects on her own personal journey through and with theory, from her early engagement with Marx to more recent encounters with theorists as diverse as Judith Butler, Arjun Appadurai and Chantal Mouffe. The volume then features the work of her students who reflect on their own uses of theory and extend Anyon's analyses into a broad range of research areas.