The Theory of Education in the Post-Modern Period: Crisis or new opportunity? Reflections on universality and comprehensiveness in pedagogic contexts.
Abstract
The text focuses on the current situation in educational thought with an emphasis on the question of the concept and function of the theory of education. The author takes a critical view of the relativistic intellectual atmosphere of the postmodern, in which there has been an abandonment of the search for universality in education.
In keeping with his view that current theory of education inclines to extreme pedocentrism, the author draws attention to several assumptions behind the mainstream of pedagogic theory which have been insufficiently critically examined and so are becoming a new and widespread form of educational ideology. In conclusion the author offers, as a new form of universality, the ideal of a comprehensive approach to upbringing and education that could replace the restricted perspective of warring pedagogical theories and move beyond both dogmatism and postmodern relativism.