Knowledge, education and social change: Exploring efforts to move beyond objectivism and relativism.

Abstract

Learning to address the unprecedented, and increasingly existential, challenges confronting humanity requires the development of increased levels of intersubjective agreement about goals, normative principles and values, as well as effort to apply normative ideals to the needs of society. Yet deliberations about such questions have often been hamstrung by tendencies towards either extreme relativism, on the one hand, or rigid orthodoxy, on the other. Drawing on the work of Bernstein (1983), Seung (1993) and others, this article explores efforts to move beyond the traditional dichotomy between objectivism and relativism in processes concerned with the generation and application of knowledge for the purpose of contributing to constructive social change. To gain insight into how such an approach might find expression in an educational setting, the preliminary results of a case study of the approach to ‘moral empowerment’ taken by a Baha’i inspired school in Macau are discussed.