ABSTRACT
In recent years, educational writing, particularly in qualitative studies and philosophy and sociology of education, has seen heated debate over the value of postmodern thinking to educational research, policy and practice. While postmodern thinkers have given increasing attention to education (see, for example, Cherryholmes, 1988; Ball, 1990a,b; Lather, 1991; Usher & Edwards, 1994; Blake, 1996, 1997; Stronach & MacLure, 1997; Atkinson, 2000a,b), their critics have not been hesitant in mounting a vociferous and heartfelt attack on postmodernism as a whole, and postmodernism in education in particular (see, for example, Skeggs, 1991; Cole & Hill, 1995; Hammersley, 1996; Cole et al., 1997; Bailey, 1999; Hill et al., 1999; Kelly et al., 1999). This dichotomy is well illustrated in the uncertain status postmodernism holds in mainstream educational research. On the one hand, Mortimore (2000) offers Stronach & MacLure’s (1997, p. 98) concept of the postmodernist as a ‘responsible anarchist’, ‘standing against the fantasies of grand narratives, recoverable pasts, and predictable futures’ as an example for researchers to follow, or at least to heed. On the other hand, postmodernism’s critics have continued to deride this whole field of thinking as irresponsible nihilism whose protagonists, in Soper’s (1991) terms ‘refuse to do anything but play’. This has led, not surprisingly, to a high degree of frustration among the critics of postmodernism, who find it hard to engage in meaningful argument with opponents who will not meet them on their own or any other ground.
