This essay discusses an academic capitalist knowledge regime (i.e. the increasing engagement of public institutions of higher education in market-based ventures) and the alterations to teacher and student behavior and the learning environment that result. Social justice-oriented university courses are positioned as sites where democratization and…

Postmodernism has many inferences that can be applied to the theory and practice of higher educational administration. Today, in higher education administrators are continuously focused on strategies that will ensure the future of minority educational institutions. As a result postmodernism is an important factor in the future of higher…

This article concerns the usefulness of postmodernity for illuminating change in higher education associated with the new millennium. Overarching is the notion that history is not a smooth, rational, progressive unfolding of events but a series of ruptures and fragmenting disjunctures. This article asserts that when viewed in epochal terms, the…

Employing Calvin O. Schrag's response to postmodernismtransversal rationality engaged through praxial critiquethe constructive side of postmodern theories can be highlighted in higher education while at the same time answering the pundits who see little to no constructive side to postmodern theories. Using praxial critique through media literacy…

Argues that the postmodern tenet of "articulation" can be used to better teach the philosophy of "sociological imagination." Discusses the notion of "teacher as text" as a strategy of using instructors' personal experiences to help students make sense of their own perceptions and practices, and to better understand actualizations of agency. (DSK)

Examines transitions from critical to postcritical and postmodern to premodern that underlie Philip Wexler's writing on social and educational theory, discussing critical social psychology and examining social and spiritual transformation in the postmodern world. For Wexler's envisioned transformation to occur, it must be accompanied by ongoing…

Questions how academia can continue to engage in knowledge production without producing and legitimating dominant discourses. Maintains that academia must accept that individuals live in a time of multiple perspectives, an absence of embracing consensus, and the deconstruction of any absolute or foundational principles of truth. (MJP)

Explains that Jerome Bruner has been one of the most prominent U.S. psychologists and educators since World War II with particular interest in and influence on social education. Reviews Bruner's work focusing on the influence of his early years in public opinion research and the significance of his conversion to postmodernism. (Contains…

Addresses the assumption that ritual performances are not as important in modern, secular, bureaucratic schools as they were in communal, sacred, tribal societies, reviving a concept forged in structuralism and redefining it as a performative text, thus taking advantage of certain poststructural insights while maintaining much of the power of its…

Describes the ways collaborative learning methods can enhance the undergraduate course in sociological theory. Presents an explanation of collaborative learning, distinguishes it from active learning, identifies its challenges, and describes some specific ways that instructors can use it to teach classical sociological theory. (CMK)

In this article, Lewin's (1951) social field theory is used as a framework for analyzing the potential for implementing scalable and sustainable e-learning initiatives in the academy. Powerful external economic and social forces coming to bear on academic leadership decisions are considered. The impacts of the emergence of the global learning…

This document demonstrates how social cartography can be used in social research to include individuals and cultural clusters who want their own narratives included in the social discourse. Social cartography is defined as the creation of maps addressing questions of location in the social milieu. Visual images, depicting on the two dimensional…

A collection of chapters examines the applicability of postmodern/poststructural theory to educational leadership and school restructuring in the United States today. Based on the assertion that educational administration research and publications have been traditional, conservative, and naive, this book presents a review of Weberian positivism,…

The chapters in this book originated in an invited seminar at the Griffith University Gold Coast (Australia) campus on the occasion of a visit by Philip Wexler in December 1993. The seminar explored ways and means of transcending a postmodernist analysis of education. Although the examples are predominantly Australian, the issues are…

The history of Western social thought may be examined by focusing on the linkage between dominant legitimating ideologies and various institutional structures of the social formation. As society moves in the direction of postindustrialism, the development of a constructivist, rather than deconstructive, form of postmodernism is needed.…