Sketching the Multiple Relevance of Postmodernism to Educational Theory

Introduction

Philosophically, the last decades of the twentieth century have been marked by debates concerning postmodernism. At times denoting an artistic trend; at other times signifying a whole era and its self-understanding; or designating a new line of thought (Hutcheon 1989), the postmodern has attracted much theoretical attention and exerted a strong influence on contemporary worldviews and academic disciplines. Educational philosophy has been especially receptive of postmodern thought. The present entry maps this influence through a brief reference to major postmodern ideas and thinkers and to the transfer of postmodern insights to educational-theoretical discourses.

It has not been easy to define the term “postmodern” (and the related -ism) or to determine the advent of the corresponding era. The notion has proven too elastic to cover overspecified, exclusive, and narrow semantic contents. Likewise, the passage from modernity to postmodernity cannot be treated as an...