This volume is designed to bridge a gap in the current theoretical debate about the nature, scope and relevance of postmodern perspectives in the humanist and social sciences in Eastern and Western Europe. While the debate has been reasonably comprehensive and certainly abrasive in Western European and Anglophone countries, it has signally failed to incorporate the viewpoints of Eastern European scholars and intellectuals. Even the current appropriation of Mikhail Bakhtin as a prophet of the postmodern is, paradoxically, a monologic engagement with his thought rather than a dialogic encounter of cultures. Doubtless different historical experiences, ideology and social aspirations go some way to account for the weariness of Eastern Europe with postmodern challenge and its glad embrace by Western scholars. The volume comprises some fifteen essays by leading historians, literary theorists and social scientists from Western and Eastern Europe and America. It has a threefold aim: firstly, to illuminate the distinctiveness of current Western and Eastern European theorizing about history and society; secondly, to reveal points of tension and disagreement, and, finally, to open up a space for a meeting of seemingly incompatible worlds.

This book offers some suggestions as to ways forward from this dilemma. Drawing on the new intellectual frameworks of critical pedagogy, feminism and postmodernism and their impact upon educational theory, practice and research, the book focuses on the changing contexts of adult education. By building on the notion of going beyond the limits of certain current adult education orthodoxies, the authors try to provide alternatives for practice. The final three chapters deal with research, focusing on a critical macro-analysis of mainstream paradigms, a review of alternative approaches, and a more micro-analysis centering on the role of the socially-located self in the research process.

Based on nearly a decade of scholarship, this is a highly focused book on the implications of postmodernism for the construction and assessment of theory and practice in educational administration. Current ideas of practice are deconstructed, from the notions of sound research to the use of national standards in the preparation of educational leaders along with ways of examining and resolving the theory-practice gap. Part One of the book contains chapters dealing with the rise of postmodernism and describes its broad-based dissent from a century of thought in the field, including a penetrating examination of whether the concept of a field itself is viable. Part Two of the book explores the many ramifications of postmodernism to practice, beginning with ideas concerning educational research. These chapters tackle the tough issues of the efficacy of the Interstate Leaders Licensure Standards (ISLLC) and the national exam as examples of job deskilling and deprofessionalization in the guise of raising standards of preparation of future educational leaders. Other chapters deal with deconstructing the popular managerial ideas contained in Stephen Covey's works and dispute Joe Murphy's call for a new center of gravity in the field as reinforcing the status quo. Finally, the book tackles the issue of the theory-practice gap and indicates that new and progressive theories which anticipate problems of practice are what is required to deal with this persistent issue. The book contains many helpful exhibits in understanding the issues concerning theory and practice, as well as a glossary of terms most commonly found in postmodern discourse. This book is designed for college and university programs engaged in the preparation of educational leaders for ele-mentary/secondary schools and college administrative positions.

Re-imagining Academic Staff Development: Spaces for Disruption, a book with a strong commitment to social transformation, is a welcome addition to the field of academic development studies. South Africa may have unique social challenges, but in highlighting higher education?s central role in responding to them, this book reminds academic developers everywhere of the intrinsic politicalness of our work. In a series of theoretically diverse chapters, all written by members of the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University, we are provoked to reconsider the meaning of our practice and why we do it. An enlivening read! ? Barbara Grant, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

As we enter a new millennium, it is clear that we are in the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that is changing everything from the ways that we work, communicate, participate in politics, and spend our leisure time. The technological revolution centers on computer, information, communication, and multimedia technologies, is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and therefore ascribes technologies a central role in every aspect of life. This Great Transformation poses tremendous challenges to critical social theorists, citizens, and educators to rethink their basic tenets, to deploy the media in creative and productive ways, and to restructure the workplace, social institutions, and schooling to respond constructively and progressively to the technological and social changes that we are now experiencing.

Learn how to reach a new generation in a rapidly changing world with the unchanging gospel.

This is an examination of the effect that postmodernism has had upon sociological thought. Individual chapters address the topics of class, gender, race, criminology, deviance, law, culture, sexuality, emotion, medicine, science, and technology.

This collection of essays brings together a number of contributions on Lyotard's work made by philosophers, educationalists and sociologists around the special focus of education. Their intent is to examine Lyotard's notion of the postmodern condition and its relevance to education.

An anthology which presents the synthesizing trend of post-modernism in all its diversity: a convergence in architecture and literature, film and cultural theory, sociology and politics after the fall of communism, feminism and theology, and science and economics.