The author introduces Hegel. From the triad (Hegelian Dialect), he briefly gives an overview of the history of philosophy. In true Hegelian form, it is now time to reform "Postmodernism" and replace it with "Meta modernism." Postmodern had a short life from 1950 to now and has left few adherents. It is confusing and…

In this article I discuss how Jacques Rancière's thought invites us to re-conceptualize the education-emancipation nexus. The primary goal of traditional approaches to emancipatory and anti-oppressive education has been to empower the oppressed so that the latter can (re)gain their voice and transform their situations. Building on Rancière's…

Higher education educators commonly understand social identities, including gender, to be fluid and dynamic. Lev's (2004) model of four components of sexual identity is commonly used to demonstrate the fluidity of sex, gender, and sexuality for individuals, but it does little to address the fixedness of those constructs. Through a multipronged…

In this article, the author reports on an awareness of controversial incidents on campuses around North America surrounding "politically correct" speech codes and thought control measures instituted at the behest of faculty and students of this ideological persuasion. It seems that critical theory is going beyond "critical…

Scholars of curriculum and teaching have undertaken critical analyses of the myriad ways in which curricula--taught, planned, lived, and/or hidden--and pedagogical practices (re)produce social norms and bring into effect particular kinds of subjects. This article presents an engagement with curriculum and pedagogy that foregrounds the…

The author seeks to revitalize the interests of social educators in the value of using critical, postmodern discourses for rich comprehension of and productive scholarly research in our field. These discourses (a) challenge existing understanding within social education and the knowledge and knower they help produce; and (b) imagine more complex,…

"A Decolonizing Encounter" examines the effects of western colonialism on historically marginalized and colonized populations living both in the West and the "third world". Specifically, it explores crucial issues such as the decolonizing of schools and communities of color; the decentralization of power of the capitalist and…

This article elaborates mimesis as a theory of causality used to explain human behavior. Drawing parallels to social constructionism's critique of positivism and naturalism, mimesis is offered as a theory of causality explaining human behavior that contests the current dominance of Newton's theory of causality as cause and effect. The contestation…

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…

The use of poststructuralist thought in educational research is constrained by a tension between, on the one hand, what is considered to be its emancipatory and empowering potential and, on the other, a reluctance to be distracted from practical concerns and, hence, a fear of alienating the practitioner by speaking in terms of the theoretical.…

Saturating the Canadian landscape are media and health industry discourses representing childhood physical "(in)activity" and "obesity" as being at "epidemic" proportion. Increasingly identified as a focus of concern within such representations is the school setting, simultaneously positioned both as a cause of…

While modernism with its principles lying in reason and metanarratives was commended for rationalism and absolute truth yielded in science and technology, postmodernism rejects scientific achievements which have brought both benefits and disasters to life and widened social stratification. It describes a rejection of such fundamental Western…

In this article, the authors trace the possible political potential of their post-modernist, feminist approach to life story research with people with the label of "learning difficulties." As a self-advocate with an ally, they define tagging along with each other as discovery science. The authors reflect on how they openly and critically write…

This paper raises the issue of what it is to be "critical" in education studies and in social theory more generally. It argues that this idea has for a long time been associated with forms of social constructionism and sociological reductionism. These understand the idea that knowledge is social in terms of reducing it to the experiences and…

Religious education takes place within a postmodern culturalintellectual milieu exemplified in part by the work of Michel Foucault, which disrupts common modern concepts of knowledge and power. For Foucault, power is not only repressive but also productive, insofar as every system of knowledge depends on social arrangements of power for the…