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ENQUIRING INTO RESEARCH, ACTION AND POSTMODERNISM
CONTENTS
the postmodern and the sense
of action
the postmodern and the curriculum
speaking in voices, the postmodern
silence
education, schooling and postmodernism
the postmodern and the sense of action
The Postmodern world can be experienced as confusing, increasingly complex and dangerous. Through action research, it is said, professionals can inform their own decision making and improve the quality of social action. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, business people can all employ such research strategies. However, in whose interest are they to be employed? The danger is that action research can become simply another sophisticated surveillance and control technique 'in the best interests' of clients. Action Research: the reformation of maladjusted institutions provides a general argument and an approach for employing action research not in a service but in a subversive mode.
the postmodern and the curriculum
Central to understanding action in the postmodern scene is a reconceptualisation of the 'curriculum'. A curriculum, it is argued in Modernism, Post Modernism: The Curriculum of Surfaces is not a rigid body of information to be transmitted, but rather a set of courses of inquiry, reflection, expression and action. Curricula are like the tracks left behind and can be known more in retrospect than in anticipation. Democratic action, the freedom to think and to do and to engage in community with others should be the purpose of any process of education. Professionals, as do all others, have a choice: either to employ knowledge and 'expert action' for purposes of surveillance and control; or, to employ processes of critical inquiry to inform and support the free development of individuals and their communities.
speaking in voices, the postmodern silence
The postmodern attitude has been defined as being skeptical of all metanarratives, all grand theories which would explain everything. It is simply that no theory is able to explain everything. Something is always left out. In the rush to dump grand narratives of how the world works or should work, what has often been lost is the hope of regenerating solidarity, of stimulating great social movements for change. Socialism seemed to offer that hope of a changed world where social justice rather than greed would dominate. The contemporary world seems more in line with the macabre visions of a de Sade or the paranoid hallucinations of the insane: Chez Sade: what's cooking tonight? Soul Murder, replied the Judge: Some draft notes about collaboration between consenting partners
education, schooling and postmodernism
It is useful to distinguish between schooling and education. Often they are used interchangably. However, I find it useful to use the term schooling to refer to the processes through which minds and behaviours are moulded according to the formal or informal, hidden or overt, prescriptions of authorities, whereas education
far from being a mere deliverer of curicula, of syllabi, of social values and so on, has a perspective on the issues of social organisation that are unique. Its role is to facilitate inquiry and encourage an awareness of structures and processes of cultural/social life, and to promote self expression and action in the world.
As such education draws out the possibilities for change and development, creativity, understanding, self expression and cultural, political, economic, personal, ethical action. What consitutes a curriculum is thus different in each case. Under schooling a curriculum is whaever is imposed by some powerful other. Under education the curriculum is an exploration of possibilities. As an extreme - perhaps caricaturish example I have described the curriculum in terms of its resemblances to the experiences of Judge Schreber who wrote a book on the impact of his father'sapproach to training on his mental state - I call it the paranoid curriculum. It uncomfortably parallels the characteristics of contemporary schooling in many societies - see in particular a study of violence in schools around the world, by Harber (2004), or my own earlier studies of Maladjusted Schooling (1983) and the Violent Imagination (Schostak 1986) or the forbidden discourse more widely in society (Schostak 1993). The arguments that are presented do not suggst that education does not take place in schools but that the organisation of schooling inhibits teachers and children, lecturers and students, people throughout all walks of life from engaging in the kinds of practices that would facilitate the free play of education - the drawing out of possibilities for creative, productive, enjoyable, free and democratic forms of self and social expression and action. Given that this is an age where many, if not all, of the certainties that were accepted in previous epochs are being challenged, then it makes sense that education becomes a fundamental process for drawing out the implications of alternative world views, of societies, organisations and cultures that are under constant change whether due to the impact of technological change or the challenges of new systems of belief and understanding the world(s) about. The postmodern curriculm, then, is one that addresses the issues that are raised by uncerainty, the challenges of change, difference and diversity. The challenges are explored in several papers: Voices and Visions, biographical curricula, the curriculum of surfaces.
References
Harber, C. (2004) Schooling as violence. How schools harm pupils and societies, RoutledgeFalmer: London and new York
Schostak, J. F. (1983) Maladjusted Schooling: Deviance, Social Control and Individuality in Secondary Schooling, London, Philadelphia. Falmer.
Schostak, J. F. (1986) Schooling the Violent Imagination, London, New York. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Schostak, J. F. (1993 ) Dirty Marks: The Education of Self, Media and Popular Culture, Pluto Press, London
