Global Education in the '21st Century': two different perspectives on the 'post-' of postmodernism

Abstract

In this paper I compare two possible interpretations of the need to shift conceptualisations of knowledge, learning and identities in education towards an emphasis on fluidity and provisionality in global societies. I outline the arguments and potential implications of a framework concerned with 'cognitive adaptation', which conceptualises the 'post' in 'postmodernism' as 'after'; and another concerned with 'epistemological pluralism', which conceptualises the 'post' in 'postmodernism' as 'questioning'. Both perspectives align in their conceptualisation of knowledge, learning, reality and identities as socially constructed, fluid, open to negotiation and always provisional, and in the call for epistemological shifts away from mono-epistemicism. However, they are motivated by different conceptualisations of social problems and envisaged solutions. In the second part of the paper, I discuss some of the tensions created in working towards epistemological shifts and present an example of the translation between emerging theories and practices based on the idea of epistemological pluralism.