In Defence of Ideas,or Why 'What Works' is Not Enough

The debate surrounding educational research in the UK has been fuelled by four recent government-funded publications that have thrown doubt on the validity, relevance and applicability of educational research. In this paper, the author offers a critique of these publications and questions their privileged role in informing government policy. She challenges the current trend towards instrumentalism in funded educational research, and explores the ways in which theories, rather than evidence, provide an essential infrastructure to teachers' day-to-day thinking and practice. Finally, she compares the restrictive effect of a narrow focus on 'what works' with the opportunities offered by postmodernism for broadening the scope, purpose and interpretation of the research of the future.     

别一种生活方式是可能的——论建设性后现代主义对现代生活方式的批判及启迪

从建设性后现代主义--一种建立在有机联系概念基础之上的鼓励历险和创新,推重多元和谐的整合性的思维方式出发,对作为现代性核心特征的"划一思维"进行反思和批判,对这种"划一思维"裹挟着消费主义大潮对现代人的生活方式霸道性的主宰进行揭露和分析,在此基础上提出一种以自由为旨归的,追求"诗意存在"和"创意存在"的浪漫的后现代生活方式.作者强调,这样一种后现代思维方式虽然不乏理想主义色彩,但对于抵抗现代人对生存事实的深度屈服,对物质主义和消费主义的过度迷恋.视缺乏创意的生活,人云亦云的生活为常态的囚徒状况,不失为一种健康的选择.     

'A Demented Form of the Familiar': Postmodernism and Educational Research

What can postmodernism do for, or to, educational research? The article discusses its potential for resisting closure and simplification. Developing a ‘preposterous’, anachronistic postmodern method that is caught up with surrealism and the baroque, the article plays with trompel'oeil paintings and outmoded popular entertainments such as magic lanterns, peep shows and clockwork automata as figures for critique and analysis. It argues for defamiliarisation, fascination, recalcitrance and frivolity as methodic practices for research in the compromised conditions of postmodernity, and as forms of ethical resistance to the risk‐averse literalism that pervades contemporary education policy.     

The Responsible Anarchist: Postmodernism and social change

In recent years, the adoption of postmodern theoretical perspectives within educational research has prompted strong critical reaction. For some critics (particularly Marxist researchers), the greatest fault of postmodernism is that it lacks an agenda for social change. This paper takes issue with this argument, and with four associated arguments: (1) that postmodernism disempowers those to whom it claims to give voice; (2) that it appeals only to intellectuals and has no practical value; (3) that it denies the possibility of the construction of a new social order; and (4) that it colludes with the status quo in its refusal to act. Addressing each of these points in turn, the author suggests that, contrary to the view of these critics, postmodernism offers a powerful force for social change, through the acceptance of uncertainty, the acknowledgement of diversity and the refusal to see concepts such as 'justice' or 'society' as fixed, or as governed by unassailable 'truths'.     

意义的丢失:后现代视野中的教师身份认同危机

后现代对现代主义的批判对当前的中国教育有着重要的启示意义。现代主义所造成的结构主义、未来主义、教师商品化等加剧了教师在实现学校教育的功利目的与自身的专业发展之间存在的紧张和冲突,使教师陷入了日益严重的身份认同危机。后现代教育思想并非仅仅是解构,它在某种程度上为教育理论研究提供了一种新的思路:教师身份认同重构的路径在于重建亲密的师生关系和确立教师专业发展的目标。     

The autonomy of knowledge and the decline of the subject: Postmodernism and the reformulation of the university

The article pertains to how one might employ postmodern assumptions in the study and analysis of comparative higher education. The text first critiques the idea of modernism by way of a discussion about postmodernism. The author then analyzes the implications of postmodernism for comparative higher education research. In doing so, the author outlines five tenets of postmodernism that revolve around alternative ways of thinking about knowledge production and identity construction. The premise of the text is that postmodernism offers a different interpretation from modernism about the twin ideas of knowledge and identity. The author concludes by offering suggestions about how postmodernism might reorient the work of comparative higher education research. Accordingly, the goal of the text is to delineate competing conceptions of reality with regard to knowledge production, identity, and the role of the university.     

后现代主义语境中的教育观

后现代主义思潮是一种超越现代主义的新思想或新理论,代表了一种新的价值取向和思维范式。后现代主义思想理论是后现代教育理论的基础,对教育领域的变革和发展有重要的现实意义。后现代主义语境中的教育观包括个性化、多样化的后现代主义教育目的,非线性、复杂性的后现代主义课程范式,关注个体、回归生活的后现代主义教学指向,相互尊重、平等对话的后现代主义师生关系,丰富性、差异性的后现代主义教育评价,人性化、民主化的后现代主义教育管理。后现代主义对我国教育改革的启示:变革思维范式,强调对人的关注,倡导教育的多元化发展,注重平等对话的实现。     

The Impact of Postmodernism on Counseling: Boon or Bane?

This article explores the impact of postmodernism on counseling theory and practice. First, it provides an overview of theoretical frameworks of postmodernism. Next, it examines the effects of postmodernism on counseling theories and modalities. Then, it identifies the strengths and limitations of postmodern counseling and points out that one way to address these limitations is to find a synthesis of modernism and postmodernism. Finally, it recommends that the Chinese traditional theory of Yin and Yang might be helpful to such a synthesis. A caveat is: though postmodernism has much to contribute to counseling theory and practice, critical and reflective thinking on its impact is warranted.     

Comparative Methodology and Postmodern Relativism

The author addresses the problems of conducting comparative studies in education if one adopts a viewpoint of postmodern relativism. While acknowledging the value of postmodernist thought in opening up a new understanding of the educational process, he finds that postmodernism raises difficulties when one attempts to deal with the differences and interactions between cultures. He rejects the extremes of both relativism and universalism and argues that comparative studies should be based on a balance between the two.     

对后现代主义视域下教师权威的哲学反思

后现代主义教育观主张平等、对话、去权威、非理性等,倡导以多元视角认识事物,在师生平等协商中进行知识的社会建构.这种教育理念有其积极意义.但后现代主义过于偏激,对平等、多元、对话、去权威等方面的倡导太绝对化,完全颠覆了合理的教师权威存在,这就有些矫枉过正.认清后现代主义教育观的利与弊,对于我们建构合理适度的教师权威有重要意义.     

Critical Voyages: Postmodern feminist pedagogies as liberatory practice

Critical postmodern feminist theory as a pedagogical tool acknowledges differences and organizes people to create social change. Connections between feminism, critical theory, and postmodernism are discussed in relationship to possible pedagogical directions for schools and other community organizations. The authors outline six guiding principles of a critical postmodern feminist pedagogy including: students' experiences as central to teaching and learning; provisions for safe spaces in the development of students' voices; the revision of centers and margins to understand power and agency; the recognition of difference as central to the reconfiguration of existing social boundaries; the development of a language of critique and possibility; and the evolution of teachers as intellectuals. Finally, the authors highlight, in detail, two curriculum projects based in schools that exemplify these principles, a middle school forum for girls that addresses issues of sexual violence in rural Pennsylvania, USA and a high school class for pregnant and parenting teen mothers in Las Vegas, NV.     

Research methodology,education, and theoretical fashions: Constructing a methodology course in an era of deconstruction

In this article a case is made both for the utility of deconstructive questions and also for the danger of taking such questions as a sole or overriding methodological agenda in education. The discussion is mounted by attention to grounded contexts and dilemmas rather than by a commitment to abstract concerns about ''power'' or ''Other'' or ''polyphony of voices.'' The framing dilemma is how one might construct a research methodology course that is not based on positivism, relativism, or a reification of current theory as an enduring answer for students. The article takes two substantive fields of inquiry in education- (1) inequality and access in education and (2) gender and education- to argue that following through some substantive issues for educational research can provide ways of thinking about the relative merits, power, pertinence, and relationships among quantitative, qualitative, and deconstructive agendas. Finally, the article outlines a research methodology course constructed by the author to attempt to put into practical form the assumptionsabout education and research methodology that are argued in this article.     

后现代视野中的通识教育观念反思

后现代思潮在当代西方学界全面主导着人文科学与社会科学的经验反思与理论重构,而它对教育理论的批判话语更是集中于启蒙主义传统的各种教育模式。与重视知识传授和经验积累的专业化现代教育观念有所不同,后现代教育话语尊重不同主体意识的认知方式与体验过程,更加偏重个体意识与通识观念的素质培养与博雅教育。通过反思后现代思潮对于当代通识教育的各种理论利弊,将有助于建构一种面向体验教学过程和主体批判意识的新型通识教育思维。     

Science Education for Environmental Awareness in a Postmodern World

This paper identifies those elements of science education which are conducive to environmental awareness and which are congruent with reconstructive or revisionary postmodernism. The first part of the paper discusses the nature of and criticisms of modernism and the role of modern science in the environmental crisis. Developments in postmodern science which supersede modern science are identified. Aspects of science education which support postmodern science are then outlined, with a view to creating a reconstructive science education paradigm which supports environmental sustainability.     

Developments in technical education

Abstract

The paper highlights the urgent and radical questions and problems which postmodernism poses for educational studies in general, and the philosophy of education in particular. First, it outlines and interrelates the legacies of modernism in social and cultural theory. Next, it describes the reactionary anti‐modernism of the Right, and contrasts this with traditionalism. It is argued that the current political and economic context of education is largely anti‐modernist, not traditionalist. The stirrings of radical doubts about modernism are described and contrasted with the antimodernism of the Right. A salient theme to this point is the variety of conceptions of the relationship between knowledge and power. Mature postmodernism is characterised centrally in terms of a reconceptualisation of that relationship. The metamorphosis of the concept of the self in postmodernism is described and related to new problems about ethics and a newly emerging importance for the aesthetic. Finally, the paper argues that while the fundamental issues for philosophy of education are unchanged ‐problems about instrumentalism and various issues of autonomy ‐ these are radically recast in postmodernism, and present new difficulties.     

JEWISH EDUCATION IN EXTREMIS: A PROLEGOMENON TO POSTMODERN JEWISH EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT

Abstract In this article the author argues that for 150 years Jewish education has negotiated the tensions between modernity and Judaism by means of liberal religion, ultra Orthodoxy, and secular Zionism. All three are in crisis today due to the rise of postmodernism. Jewish educational thought therefore needs to create new syntheses between Jewish and postmodern life. To this end the concepts of Aliyah, modernity, and exile should be reevaluated and Jewish education should embrace the goal of working with God toward redemption. For more than 150 years Jewish education has focused on the tensions between rabbinic Judaism and modernity. Each of the models for negotiating these tensions-religious liberalism, ultra orthodoxy, and secular Zionism-succeeded beyond the imaginations of those who conceived them. Yet, each is in a state of crisis today, resulting from a deconstruction of both the rabbinic and modern assumptions upon which they are based. Addressing these crises requires reevaluation of key assumptions about the educational significance of Israel, modernity, and exile in order to lay the groundwork for more productive interactions between the Jewish people and its heritage on the one hand and the postmodern condition into which we are emerging on the other.     

What is Philosophy for Children? From an educational experiment to experimental education

Abstract

Philosophy seems to have gained solid ground in the hearts and minds of educational researchers and practitioners. We critique Philosophy for Children as an experimental programme aimed at improving children’s thinking capacity, by questioning the concept of critique itself. What does it mean when an institutional framework like the school claims to question its own framework, and what is the consequence of such a claim for thinking, in education, philosophy and the child? Implications for the concept of critical thinking follow.     

The problem of now: Bernard Stiegler and the student as consumer

Abstract

The student as consumer has emerged as a common motif and point of contestation in educational philosophy over the past two decades, as part of the critique of the neoliberal educational reform agenda that followed Lyotard’s (1984 Lyotard, F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: MUP.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) mapping of the postmodern condition. In addition, the consumer-orientated student has assumed a problematic presence in secondary-school classrooms and higher education institutions, a fact that has led to the general lament for the dehumanisation of education under a market logic. Expanding upon these narratives of ‘loss’, Bernard Stiegler’s account of the student as consumer builds upon the Lyotardian view to reveal the neurological, generational and psychical implications of what he terms the ‘battle for intelligence’, which is a result of the proletarianisation of knowledge via the imposition of marketing technologies on the psyche of the youth. This leads not only to a consumer mind-set co-opting education, but a process of ‘short-circuiting’ disrupting the educative process itself. This article will consider Stiegler’s apocalyptic vision of youth malaise in comparison to the previous notion of students as consumers in the classical and Marxist narratives he revises. It will then outline the new challenges this poses to contemporary educators, as well as the possibility of translating his utopian call to action to pedagogical practice, both of which constitute the 'problem of now'.     

后现代主义、数学观与数学教育

后现代主义的影响已从人文学科转到自然学科。作为人类知识典范的数学也受到这个思潮的冲击,不仅数学哲学观正在发生相应的转变,而且数学教育也表现出明显的后现代思维的特点。后现代主义的这种影响既有积极意义也有消极影响。对西方这一思潮进行分析与批判,可以为我国新一轮数学课程改革发展提供有益的借鉴。     

Educational Goods and the Ethical Dimensions of Educational Policy and Practice

This essay is a commentary on Brighouse, Ladd, Loeb and Swift's Educational Goods: Values, Evidence, and Decision-Making. It discusses the book's conceptualisation of childhood goods, and it comments at length on its place within the larger philosophical enterprise of promoting normatively and evidentially sound decision-making in education. A thesis of the commentary is that the book provides an important form of orientation to educational policy decision-making, but that the goods and distributive values it identifies would need to be supplemented in order to adequately address aspects of educational practice beyond the kinds of policy matters it discusses. These would include the content of education, the scope and division of educational authority, and the manner in which such authority should be exercised, for example pedagogically, in shaping student conduct, and in communicating and implementing educational policies.