Postmodernism and Its Comparative Education Implications

Abstract

the 1950s. In artistic circles, particularly in architecture and literary criticism, the discussion of a shift from aesthetic modernism to postmodernism has been continuous and sustained,' while in the social sciences postmodernism has gone through two phases. The first was rather disparate, and, in fact, various labels were invented to describe it, such as "postindustrialism," the "information society," or the "technetronic society."2 In the 1970s the discussion of postmodernism all but disappeared from social science literature;3 however, in the past decade social scientists again discussed it, and by the mid-1980s postmodernism had left the ghetto of esoteric debates and had entered the mainstream of intellectual and public discourse.4 The term "postmodernism" now refers to a discussion involving not only social scientists but also three other strands of influence more closely connected with artistic modernism.