In this article, I try to make sense conventional notions of "premodernism", "modernism" and "postmodernism" as ways of relating to reality, and apply them to education. I argue for the additional notion of "neo-premodernism" to make sense of recent attempts to engineer social reality. Each of these four…

This article explores Lyotard's notion of performativity through an engagement with McKenzie's analysis of performance as a "formation of knowledge and power" that has displaced the notion of discipline as the tool for social evaluation. Through conditions of "performance" capitalism, education is to conform to a…

In this celebration of the work of Paul Hager, I draw attention to his highly successful collaborations with David Beckett and John Halliday as indicative of his collegiality and his conviction that knowledge is produced in cooperation with others. I highlight his enduring theme of practice and his deep concern for vocational and technical…

The present research paper approaches homosexuality from a Foucauldian perspective. Foucault's place and standing in a postmodern historical and cultural context will be explained. The paper outlines how homosexuality has been historically constructed and socially constituted. How sexuality became understood as a particular form of discourse, that…

Jean-Paul Sartre claims in his 1945 lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism" that there are two kinds of existentialism: that of Christians like Karl Jaspers, and atheistic like Martin Heidegger. Sartre's "spiritual master" Heidegger had no problem with Sartre defining him as an atheist, but he had serious problems with Sartre's concept of humanism…

Over a decade after publication of "Thinking Again: Education After Postmodernism" (1998) contention still emerges among Foucaultians over whether discursively made-up things really exist, and whether removal of the constituent subject leaves room for agency within techniques of caring for the self. That these questions are kept alive shows that…

This article presents a discussion of how postmodernist, poststructuralist and critical educational thinking relate to different theories of power. I argue that both Critical Theory and some poststructuralist ideas base themselves on a concept of power borrowed from a modernist tradition. I argue as well that we are better off combining a…

Much has been written on Michel Foucault's reluctance to clearly delineate a research method, particularly with respect to genealogy (Harwood, 2000; Meadmore, Hatcher & McWilliam, 2000; Tamboukou, 1999). Foucault (1994, p. 288) himself disliked prescription stating, "I take care not to dictate how things should be" and wrote provocatively to…

Contemporary theories of civic education frequently appeal to an ideal of mutual respect in the context of ethical, ethical and religious disagreement. This paper critically examines two recently popular criticisms of this ideal. The first, coming from a postmodern direction, charges that the ideal is hypocritical in its effort to be maximally…

There is a confusion over and inchoate understanding of how the past is made understandable through postmodernist historical orientation. The purpose of the article is to outline the characteristic features of the postmodernist movement in social sciences, to explain its confrontation with history, to document its critique of the conventional…

This paper discusses the most persistent controversial issue that occurred in Western educational philosophy ever since Socrates questioned the Sophists: the role of truth in teaching. Ways of teaching these kinds of controversy issues are briefly considered to isolate their epistemic characteristics, which will enable the interpretation of Plato…

This paper argues that Wittgenstein considered himself an exile and indeed was a self-imposed exile from his native Vienna; that this condition of exile is important for understanding Wittgenstein the man and his philosophy; and that exile as a condition has become both a central characteristic condition of late modernity (as much as alienation…

This article responds to Schulz's criticisms of an earlier paper published in "Educational Philosophy and Theory." The purpose in this paper is to clarify and extend some of my earlier arguments, to indicate what is unfortunate (i.e. what is lost) from a non-charitable, modernist reading of Lyotardian postmodernism (despite its weaknesses), and to…

Postmodern theory is used to consider literacy instruction with and without an electronic whiteboard to investigate what it means to move beyond using technology to replicate older models of classroom structure that may be historically situated but that also limit or at least, do not support engagement in ways that may be possible through use of…

Although postmodernist thought has become prominent in some educational circles, its influence on science education has until recently been rather minor. This paper examines the proposal of Michalinos Zembylas, published earlier in this journal, that Lyotardian postmodernism should be applied to science educational reform in order to achieve the…