Title: Learning Theories/Post-Modern Theories - Wikibooks, open books for an open world
Headings: Learning Theories/Post-Modern Theories
Learning Theories/Post-Modern Theories
Contents
Overview
Defining causality (What causes shifts)
Cultural shifts (How it occurs)
The current debate (The basic definitions of PoMo)
Case studies & workplace examples

Content: Postmodernism accepts a worldview that what is real is what one observes, believes, or experiences. For example, anthropologists see that … “the relation between part and whole has been made problematic”… because “the conception of the whole is a construct of the observer … (Smith, n.d.). Hence, what is real is what one observes occurring around them and gives definition and reality to a situation. Postmodernism calls into question many of the assumptions once accepted by modernists. “ From the postmodern point-of-view, modernism is defined by its belief in objective knowledge” (Lemke, n.d.). “ Postmodernism … argues that what we call knowledge is a special kind of story, a text or discourse that puts together words and images in ways that seem pleasing or useful to a particular culture. … It denies that we can have objective knowledge, because what we call knowledge has to be made with the linguistic and other meaning-making resources of a particular culture, and different cultures can see the world in very different ways, all of which "work" in their own terms. It argues that the belief that one particular culture's view of the world is also universally "true" was a politically convenient assumption for Europe's imperial ambitions of the past, but has no firm intellectual basis” (Lemke). So what about the age-old questions about truth and knowledge? Postmodernists might say, "Truth is what people agree on," or "Truth is what works," or "Hey, there is no Truth, only lots of little 'truths' running around out there!"