Modern and Postmodern Models in Education: A Critical Evaluation

Educational Theory, 2003

Postmodern Openings, 2018

The postmodern culture is a concept imposed by theoreticians to express and delimit the contemporary cultural universe from that of the modern age. The postmodern culture would be the cultural equivalent of post-industrial societies, information societies, a knowledge-based economy, societies dominated by the new electronic information and communication tools. We see a coexistence of different values and ways of thinking, cultural and educational practices (a situation sometimes defined as multiculturalism), an articulation of ideas and styles. From the perspectives of postmodernists, the constructivism is the most important theory of learning. Knowledge, ideas and language are created by people, not because they are true, but especially because they are useful. As far as value reporting is concerned, the modernist paradigm promotes educators as legitimate authorities and mandates by the state to bring students into spiritual values universally. The most important values are rationality and progress. From a postmodern perspective, education must help students constructing different values and use them in the context of their own cultures. Among the important values that desirably should be cultivated through education, we mention diversity, tolerance, care, freedom, creativity, emotions, or intuition. In this study I will try to identify the main features of postmodernism and its applications in education.

Journal of In-service Education, 2000

A former elementary and secondary school teacher and past-president of a teachers union, he has written extensively about the relationship between education and differential power. He has worked with educators, unions, dissident groups, and progressive movements throughout the world to democratize educational research, policy, and practice. Among his recent books are Official Knowledge (Routledge 1993), Cultural Politics and Education

Postmodern Openings

The relevance of the chosen topic of the article is determined by the need to improve the system of educational activities in postmodernism. The article provides a theoretical analysis of developments on the topic, substantiates axiological (spiritual, moral, aesthetic and other values, their relationship with each other, with social, cultural factors and human personality; section philosophy) perspectives of educational activities in postmodern philosophy, gives a description of axiological areas of academic activity in postmodern philosophy; the main directions of the philosophy of education in the epoch of postmodernism are determined; the vision of a new paradigm of education in the works of researchers and scientists is presented. The article analyses the understanding of the problems of education in the European philosophical and pedagogical tradition of the XX-XXI century, gives a brief overview of systematic works on the philosophy of education of prominent Western research...

The question of knowledge has become a major issue in contemporary curriculum debates, world-wide. However it can be argued that this knowledge question has not always been addressed with sufficient flexibility or sophistication. The present chapter draws on poststructuralist theory and philosophy to explore issues of representation, power and democracy in post-reconceptualist curriculum inquiry. In this regard, it seeks to re-affirm the notion of ‘curriculum-as-political text’. It does so with reference to the formal installation since 2011 of a national curriculum in Australia, arguing the need to go beyond knowledge per se and for a re-assessment of the Postmodern, as a matter of crucial explanatory and symbolic significance. What else is at issue in the knowledge question? (NB: This paper was originally published in Portuguese translation in a Brazilian journal.)

Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2018

Postmodernism is an elusive concept when we attempt to connect it to educational research methodologies. This paper is a review of the literature regarding postmodernist research methodologies in education.

An important issue of postmodern educational matter is the inquiry of supporting and training competent persons as active operators, both in the belonging field or in similar fields (and, why not, even in different fields as transdisciplinary connectors). Otherwise, we consider that the importance given to the cognitive and axiological dimensions must emphasize a purely social connotation within a new-built educational system. In these conditions, the dynamic of the current educational reality sends to the organization of a social system in a post-structural manner. Therefore, the decisional substantiation on the actual level of learning processes reflects the fact that the unity of scientific knowledge is sustained by optimal educational models, perfectible in the postmodern educational openings

Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2018