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Post-IT: Putting Postmodern Perspectives to Use
in Instructional Technology—A Response to
Solomon’s “Toward a Post-Modern Agenda in
Instructional Technology”
Rick Voithofer
Alan Foley
Following the publication of David Solomon’s
winning Young Scholar paper, “Toward a
Post-modern Agenda in Instructional
Technology,” in issue 48(4) of ETR&D,
several readers inquired asking for more
concrete information on the meaning of
postmodernism and its implications for
practice and research in instructional
technology. One reader in particular, Rick
Voithofer from Ohio State University, asked if
he could submit a reaction to Solomon’s paper.
I agreed to examine a draft, on which I
provided feedback and encouragement to
continue. I then invited David Solomon to
provide a brief rejoinder. The products of these
efforts follow.
Steven Ross
Research Editor
ETR&D, Vol. 50, No. 1, 2002, pp. 5–14 ISSN 1042–1629
In this paper, we respond to David
Solomon’s construction of postmodernism and
his model of a postmodern agenda for Instructional Technology (IT), “Toward a Post-Modern
Agenda in Instructional Technology” (2000), by
offering an example of how postmodern
perspectives can be used in IT research and
development.
As Solomon and the extant literature indicate, the term “postmodern” is problematic and
confusing. While it is beyond the scope of this
response to address the contingency of the term,
we do offer a definition that fits within our own
research. Simply put, postmodern theories
frame research, learning, and instructional
design as processes that exist in a world of rapid
technical innovation and increasingly unclear
and quickly shifting social and cultural boundaries, where objectivity and efficiency are less
easy to generalize across multiple settings.
Postmodern theories hold that particular groups
(i.e., efficiency-minded, scientific) have historically controlled not only access to knowledge,
but also the standards by which knowledge is
considered valuable or legitimate. As a result,
postmodern perspectives question the authority
of traditional science, as well as any authoritative canon (or agenda) whether it is in art,
science, philosophy, or instructional design, in
favor of approaches that are more reflective,
situated and responsive. Instead of looking for
generalizable and universal approaches,
postmodern perspectives tend toward approaches that are applicable to specific situations and are based on the conditions of those
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situations. Findings from postmodern research
are often found to be widely applicable, but the
intent in these studies focuses on the local.
We wish to build on Solomon’s interest in
elevating postmodernism to agenda status
within the field and continue the conversation
about postmodernism and instructional technology (IT) that others have started (Hlynka, 1995,
1996; Hlynka & Belland, 1991; Wilson, 1997;
Yeaman, 1994). We agree with Solomon that it is
important to develop common terminology surrounding postmodernism and to develop contexts for theory construction (p. 6); however, we
disagree, on various points, with Solomon’s
definition of postmodernism, the contributions
he suggests postmodernism can make to the
field, and his efforts to place postmodernism in
pre-existing IT categories. We think it is time to
move toward more fully applying postmodern
perspectives and practices in the design and research of educational technologies, and we will
do so here by discussing how postmodern
theories can contribute to IT and by offering
points of access for educational technologists.
Using a composite of experiences we have faced
as researchers and scholars, we will demonstrate
how two areas of postmodern thought,
postcolonialism and cultural studies, can be
used in IT research and development.
Commonly used IT instructional design
textbooks (Heinich, Molenda, Russell, & Smaldino, 2001; Morrison, Ross, & Kemp, 2001; Smith
& Ragan, 1999) tentatively dedicate small sections to issues of race, class, and gender in relation to instructional design; however, in our
view they do not offer instructional designers
adequate strategies for taking these difficult-todefine factors into consideration in their design
process. Our use of postmodern frameworks is
rooted in the position that IT, generally, has
failed to adequately integrate matters of race,
class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality in relation to learning in technology-mediated learning
environments. These are areas in which a great
deal of educational scholarship has been shaped
by postmodern perspectives (Cherryholmes,
1988; Giroux, 1994; Hill, McLaren, Cole, &
Rikowski, 1999; Ulmer, 1989; Usher & Edwards,
1996), not just as a call for a return to philosophical discourse that challenges our assumptions
ETR&D, Vol. 50, No. 1
about truth and disciplinarity (p.5), but as
material and analytical guides for the design,
pedagogy, research, and assessment of information technologies that are rooted in the complex
experience of learning in a media-rich life of
layered meanings.
Postmodern theories are already being put to
productive use by educational researchers and
theorists (see Britzman, 1995b, 1998; Ellsworth,
1989, 1997; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Lather,
1991; Pinar, 1998; Usher, Bryant, & Johnston,
1997, in addition to those already mentioned)
and have been refined in educational research.
We suggest that instructional technologists
should consider building on the considerable
scholarship in postmodernism and education
that has already been undertaken, scholarship
that Solomon does not address in his article and
that can be closely related to IT. A common
thread in all the examples cited above is an interest in postmodern perspectives to understand
and address the complexities and inequalities
(in relation to access to knowledge) of learning.
IT researchers can extend that interest to exploring issues of learning and teaching with educational media in a postmodern world.
Defining Postmodern IT Research
Solomon brings up a number of important
aspects of postmodern perspectives. According
to Solomon’s description, postmodernism constellates around three specific areas: (a) an intellectual movement, (b) a social condition, and (c)
a philosophy (p. 8). We would like to build on,
and in some aspects diverge from, Solomon’s
eight assumptions about postmodernism
(pluralism, eclecticism, knowledge, truth, language, communication, complexity, and self)
(pp. 13–15) by offering a description of
postmodernism framed within a list of possible
priorities for postmodern IT researchers. This
list begins to address the actual practice of
postmodern research in IT that Solomon does
not fully consider. Important to note in the components listed below is that they need to be considered together and in relation to one another.
Additionally these components are not definitive; rather they reflect our views of postmodern
IT research.
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POST-IT: PUTTING POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES TO USE
Postmodern perspectives are interested in how technology shapes pedagogy and curriculum by asking
how particular technologies or delivery media frame
what is teachable and unteachable. Rather
than
focusing on how students use technology, a
postmodern researcher might address issues of
identity and consider how particular representations exclude certain students while inviting others. While IT researchers have
historically asked what impact educational technology has on learning efficiency and made
media-delivery comparisons, postmodern IT researchers might take a different approach by asking how technology and media inform the
larger context of the learner’s life in relation to
learning. A postmodern IT researcher might
engage in a project on educational uses of the Internet by focusing on how students react to certain appeals that commercial Websites address
to them.
Postmodern IT research is concerned with curriculum. Solomon’s vision of postmodernism is
often constrained by the traditional categories of
IT inquiry that may not include the full body of
curriculum research. While Solomon’s analysis
of the benefits of postmodernism to the IT field
are not without merit, we suggest that
postmodern perspectives could expand what is
viewed as IT by increasingly integrating broader
notions of curriculum. Postmodern researchers
tend to take an expansive view of what constitutes curriculum. One example of this
perspective is the curriculum reconceptualist
movement (Pinar, 1975; Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubman, 1995), which pursues two complementary foci: one, influenced by the work of
Dewey (1938), looks at how individuals construct knowledge and how curriculum can be
used to enhance the experience of the individual; the other examines how curriculum influences and contributes to social justice and
equity. The combination of these two perspectives is a postmodern curriculum (Doll, 1993;
Slattery, 1995) that relies on autobiographical
understandings of knowledge, multiple representations during learning (i.e., arts-based inquiry), and responsiveness to multiple
intersections of race, class, gender, and ethnicity,
among others.
7
Postmodern IT is self-reflexive. This means that
Postmodern IT researchers and instructional
designers are aware of and take into consideration their own social positions, assumptions,
and claims about technology and learning.
Solomon mentions this in a paragraph beginning “Poststructural thinking in IT” (p. 11). We
believe that postmodern researchers and instructional designers should continually strive
to recognize and question their beliefs about
what is being studied and designed and how
those beliefs shape the findings of their research
and design. While Solomon, citing Richey (1998)
and others, calls these beliefs one’s “philosophical orientation” (p. 8), we caution against pursuing only an abstract discourse of philosophy that
is difficult for instructional designers and
teachers to apply. We suggest that members of
the field consider weaving self-reflexivity into
all levels of practice and training by developing
questioning strategies that consider social and
ethical concerns as well as instructional goals.
Postmodern perspectives are concerned with
addressing issues of social justice and
democracy. Among other things, this represents
a concern for multicultural issues and creating
engaging and culturally relevant educational experiences for underrepresented and underserved groups. Postmodern perspectives are
well equipped to address the complexities of the
issues and circumstances surrounding access to
technology that have become known as the digital divide. Related to this is the question of who
has access to the knowledge that is taught using
a particular technology or medium. Although
Solomon notes that postmodernism shares
philosophical similarities with critical theory (p.
12), we hold that critical perspectives are more
than just criticism; they are also appeals for social justice.
Postmodern perspectives are critical of theoretical
and methodological systems that uncritically favor
particular points of view or belief systems. Related
to this, postmodern perspectives are skeptical of
traditional researchers’ operationalizing of
methodology, which can cast too narrow a net of
inquiry when studying questions in a
postmodern world where complexity and multidimensionality are the norm. We are not arguing for those engaging in IT research to
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8
eliminate the practice of operationalizing; our
concern regards when these operationalizations
become institutionalized, go unquestioned, and
are subsequently applied to larger contexts than
those for which they were originally intended.
Postmodern researchers favor multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary approaches that are guided by complex ecological, rather than systemic, questions, instead of questions that artificially carve out a narrow
area of inquiry within a learning system. The ecology of a learning system includes factors that are
not traditionally considered in a systemic learning environment analysis, for example, how factors such as race and gender are defined in a
particular situation. In others words, an ecological approach challenges the assumptions that
define what have been called dependent and independent variables by questioning the distinction between the two. This means that
postmodern research projects often span
academic subject, aesthetic, and institutional
boundaries. Postmodern IT researchers who are
concerned with the context and ecology of a particular problem draw from areas as diverse as
anthropology, educational psychology, art, history, political science, curriculum theory, information sciences, and cybernetics. In offering an
ecological model, we would like to advance the
discussion a little further than Solomon does
when he calls for a pluralistic incorporation of
disciplines into IT (p. 13). An ecological model
recognizes that there exist hierarchies of disciplines and that all do not stand on equal footing within a particular study. Pluralism suggests
an equality that, we maintain, does not and
should not exist. By recognizing this hierarchy
of disciplines, we propose that postmodern IT
researchers continue to develop languages to
name and support their reasons for employing
multiple disciplines.
Postmodern researchers are concerned with language
and meaning (often broadly referred to as “discourse”), and with what research, learning, designs,
and teaching are possible in relation to particular social languages. For example, there are particular
discourses for instructional design, for research,
for various communities, and for the technical
arena. These discourses have effects on how
ETR&D, Vol. 50, No. 1
people are taught and in the ways that new
knowledge is created. In this sense, how a person is trained to be a teacher, instructional designer, or educational psychologist creates a set of
assumptions about teaching, design, and inquiry that are enforced by a discourse community that shares the same assumptions.
Postmodern teachers, designers, and researchers
constantly question the assumptions and claims
of their discourse communities and in doing so,
are willing to go outside the boundaries of an established community for new languages with
which to address postmodern questions. This
has direct implications for the ways that we
think about professional and academic disciplines by creating more permeable boundaries
between schools of thought.
Postmodern researchers are not merely hesitant about
avoiding universally generalizable claims about
learning; they avoid them in favor of more contextualized conclusions. These contextualized conclusions are drawn in light of specific practices
or interventions that focus on a problem at hand.
Solomon cites Wilson (1997), who makes associations between postmodern thinking and
constructivism to describes this perspective. We
are cautious about creating too close a link between postmodern perspectives and constructivism. We suggest instead that the two evolved
separately and only recently have become associated in the way that Solomon proposes in
which postmodern philosophy serves as a foundation for constructivism (p. 16). This is significant to our reading of the importance of
contextualized claims in postmodernism because there is not always a clean relationship between constructivism and postmodernism.
While they may both emphasize the individual
construction of knowledge, their conceptual and
theoretical backgrounds are often divergent.
Furthermore, postmodern thinking should be
thought of as an avoidance of overarching
theories (i.e., grand narratives) while constructivism can be exactly that.
Postcolonialism and Cultural Studies
While Solomon provides some examples of
what postmodernism can contribute to IT re-
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POST-IT: PUTTING POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVES TO USE
search, including “pluralism” (p. 15), “the social
construction of knowledge” (p. 16), and
“criticism as inquiry” (p. 16), we contend that
postmodern perspectives in IT require us not
only to ask different questions, but also to
rethink how we ask those questions. Societies
and institutions change quickly, rendering traditional notions of race, class, gender, and ethnicity less easy to define in the context of
research. This necessitates a move to more
situated, diverse research methods to address
postmodern conditions. Traditional forms of
education (e.g., public K–12 schools and universities) are now competing with privatized
entries in the education arena. One area of
academic discourse that has connected
postmodern research with postmodern conditions is postcolonialism.
Postcolonialism (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin,
1990; Bhabha, 1994; Said, 1978/1995) has
emerged from the global decline of colonial
powers as a distinctive set of theoretical voices
that challenges Western rational or scientific
ways of knowing, and supports inquiry within
culturally complex environments. Such inquiry
is nonessentialist because it does not ascribe particular stable characteristics to particular ethnic,
racial, gendered, and so forth, positions in its assumptions about learners, learning, and technology. Postcolonial research has the potential to be
particularly productive in the way that
geographic, physical, and social place are understood in virtual learning environments such as
distance education. For example, postcolonial
scholarship poses self-reflective questions to distance education designers and teachers concerning how to design and teach across geographic,
social, linguistic, and cultural distances in ways
that are culturally responsive (Dimitriadis &
McCarthy, 2001; Gay, 2000) and that allow for
multiple ways of knowing and understanding.
Postcolonial ideas are only one area taken up by
the more fully developed postmodern academic
area of cultural studies, a body of knowledge
that draws heavily from postmodern perspectives and offers instructional designers and IT
researchers tools for understanding the complexities of postmodern learning environments.
Postmodern perspectives in cultural studies
have provided a context for opening up pre-
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viously rigid models of understanding with
media. Cultural studies span a variety of disciplines, methods, paradigms, and perspectives,
many of which were identified by Solomon as
part of the foundation of postmodernism (pp. 9–
12), including literary theory, sociology, history,
linguistics, semiotics, feminisms, philosophy,
anthropology, and psychoanalysis (During,
1999; Grossberg, Nelson, & Treichler, 1992;
Turner, 1996). Postmodern sensibilities inform
many of the areas that traditional critical
theories have often neglected in cultural studies
such as Euro-centrism and sexuality (Britzman,
1995a).
Earlier we stated that current instructional
design texts do not adequately address the concept of culture. Cultural studies provides a
developed body of theory and inquiry relevant
for instructional designers and educational technologists who must design for schools and
learning contexts that are increasingly culturally
diverse. Additionally, cultural studies offers
new perspectives for instructional designers
who must work with growing numbers of
geographically dispersed distance learners. Cultural studies methods and theories draw on
postmodern notions of the contingent and
situated construction of knowledge to offer instructional designers lenses to see instruction in
terms not only of a learning system but also as a
language system in which instability is the norm
(Britzman, 1998; Ellsworth, 1997). We contend
that this is a productive space and can be put to
use by instructional designers by providing
them with tools (i.e., discourse analysis, textual
analysis, ethnography) to study the dynamic
ways that individuals make sense of their learning in hypermediated, postmodern contexts.
Such an approach would help resolve the mismatch that has emerged between modernist certainty (e.g., high stakes testing) and postmodern
uncertainty (i.e., highly contextual events and
meaning, and rapid social change and technological innovation).
Postmodern perspectives allow for, even encourage, a complexity on which traditional
models of design and inquiry foreclose. A cultural studies perspective on IT does not suggest
a utopian “fix” to the problems of education, but
it does give instructional technologists a dif-
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ferent set of tools for approaching the complexity of the postmodern world. Developing
learning goals, plans, or designs in terms of the
designer, and granting the designer or instructor
a privileged place can foreclose learning that occurs in ways that the designer does not anticipate.
Cultural-studies approaches to
instructional design take into consideration both
the cultural and social background of a designer
and researcher, how that person understands,
learns, and assumes, but do not try to pass those
social and cultural perspectives on to the learner
as the only way of understanding the world. In
the following section we provide an example of
how cultural studies can be used in IT research.
Research Example
In order to provide a context for postmodern
perspectives in IT, we offer below an example of
what a postmodern IT research project might
look like. This example, taken from our collective experience applying postmodern perspectives to IT research, includes questions that
postmodern IT researchers could ask, the assumptions they would make, and the methods,
data, analysis and applications that could be
drawn from the research.
Scenario. A postmodern IT researcher is commissioned to help a Midwest, urban high school
to integrate technology into the social science
curriculum while improving scores on standardized tests. The largest population in the
school is African Americans. The school has had
an influx of Somalian students within the past
five years. The Somalian students speak English
as a second language and have spent little time
in traditional American schools. Due to state
budget initiatives, the school, although it is in a
lower income area, has digital still cameras and
video camcorders along with five multimediacapable computers with Internet access in each
classroom.
Questions. A postmodern IT researcher would
approach the study from an ecological perspective. By ecological, we mean carefully considering the impacts of and interrelationships
ETR&D, Vol. 50, No. 1
between each component of the research problem, including existing curriculum, classroom,
school, community culture, and technical considerations. The researcher would be interested
not only in how and what is taught, but also in
how students put this knowledge to use in their
everyday lives. A postmodern researcher’s concerns often extend past the walls of the classroom.
A possible research question that would
emerge from such interests is:
• How can technology be integrated into a social studies curriculum in such a way that the
design takes into consideration the cultural
positions of students, teachers, and surrounding community, the existing curriculum, the characteristics of the technology,
and popular culture while working to avoid
assumptions about technology, culture,
learning, and what a social studies curriculum should be that foreclose on multiple
ways of knowing?
This question can be reframed in three parts: (a)
what are the social dynamics and learning goals
of the existing learning environment? (b) where
does the researcher stand on the questions of
technological neutrality and curriculum? and (c)
how can the researcher create an integrated
design that puts multiple ways of knowing to
use?
It is important to note that the researcher
does not valorize his or her assumptions over
the ideas and attitudes of the students and classroom teachers. In this sense, the development of
research questions becomes a collaborative and
iterative process. After all, who knows the situation better than the teachers and students living
it?
Assumptions. A postmodern researcher would
not make blanket statements about the subjects
of the study or attribute certain stable characteristics to students. Researchers would not, for
example, assume that male and female students
approach technology differently because of
some inherent gender difference. Rather, they
would use these differences as jumping-off
points to learn how technology was affecting the
students’ learning experiences, perhaps considering their varying cultural identities. In-
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deed, making blanket claims about the students
would obliterate any chance of understanding
how Midwestern American, Somalian, and
African American culture are interacting and intersecting in these students’ lives. Furthermore,
issues of gender cannot be split into neat binary
categories. As postmodern feminist scholars
have shown (Butler, 1990, 1993), what it means
to occupy a particular gender varies from person
to person and context to context.
Data. Postmodern researchers understand that
the presence of a researcher in a learning environment changes its dynamics. This is not to
be considered a contamination of the data but a
part of it. Important to this study is an understanding of the ecology of this learning environment by collecting data from direct observation
of the classroom. A postmodern researcher
would have less hesitancy than a traditional social scientist about being a participant observer
because central to postmodern research is the assumption that all data are biased according to
the needs and agendas of those gathering and
analyzing it. The data sources are not necessarily
different from those used in other forms of research; rather the ways those data sources are
used and analyzed are different. The intent of
this response is not to argue that postmodern research is better than other forms of research,
such as qualitative methods. Postmodern research and various qualitative methods share
common themes: social justice, critical analysis,
and interest in language to name a few; however, they should not be thought of
synonymously. Our intent is to demonstrate that
postmodern research goes beyond methods to
actually question how knowledge is created.
Data sources could include Websites and
computer-based curriculum materials. Reflective journals written by both the teachers and
students would prove helpful. Postmodern
perspectives could include alternate forms of
data including artistic or aesthetic productions.
These interdisciplinary approaches draw from
the humanities, especially from the fields of
media studies and the communication arts.
These fields tell us that media technology, like
the Internet and multimedia, can create multidisciplinary forms of knowledge and interactive
ways of knowing, and can help us explore op-
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portunities to teach knowledge that challenges
one’s sense of self in relation to others (Butler,
1990). In this particular study, sources of data
might include student productions such as Websites, digital video productions representing
Somalian-American culture, digital imaging
projects, essays, poetry, drama, or traditional
forms of Midwestern, African American and
Somalian culture. The flexibility and insights offered by a postmodern researcher’s considerations of the postmodern condition of cultural
heterogeneity, the Internet, rapid social changes
and technological innovation are most helpful
when working with multiple media (i.e., multiple channels of meaning), multiple data sources,
multiple social positions, and flexible notions of
curriculum.
Methods. Some of the methods that postmodern
research might use include discourse analysis
(Fairclough, 1992; Gee, 1996), textual analysis
(Marshall, 1992), ethnography (Rose, 1990), and
narrative analysis. Discourse analysis is a
method of analyzing written, spoken, visual, or
audio language and examining what that language makes thinkable, teachable, and learnable
within particular social settings. Textual
analysis is particularly helpful in looking at the
structures and representation within mediated
educational materials such as Websites, videos,
and CD-ROMs. Ethnographic methods immerse
postmodern IT researchers into the learning environment under consideration. This allows researchers to understand the characteristics of the
learners and the subtleties of the learning environment. Narrative analysis represents an approach to research as the investigation of the
lived experience of teachers and students. Narrative analysis allows researchers to look for
recurring patterns or sets of patterns in the data.
It is important that postmodern research not be
equated with qualitative research in general.
While postmodern researchers often do utilize
many qualitative methods, most qualitative research could not be considered postmodern.
Much qualitative research, by its very nature, is
governed by specific rules regarding the roles
and definition of researcher subject and data.
Data Analysis. Once the data of direct observation—curriculum documentation, reflective
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journals, and student projects—have been
gathered, a postmodern researcher would use
methods like discourse analysis and narrative
analysis to create an evolving description of the
classroom and curriculum that would provide
points of reference for the design of the curriculum. For example, the analysis might reveal
that students in the class understand historical
events as the expression of a tension between
two binary sides (i.e., right and wrong, local and
foreign, good and bad). A postmodern perspective on history assumes that history varies according to the biases and interests of the person
telling that history and that there are never just
two sides of a historical event. The curriculum
and projects designed to address this observation might take into consideration traditional accounts of history that appear on a standardized
test while helping the students to contextualize
the history into their own lives. The Internet,
with its multiple and constantly changing sources of information and communication, could
provide the hub for such contextualization.
Applications. Perhaps the most difficult aspect
of postmodern perspectives for traditional researchers to accept is that postmodern researchers develop highly contextual and
contingent conclusions. This is based on the assumption that learning includes unpredictable
and uncontrollable factors. Postmodern researchers are skeptical of making conclusions
that can be easily generalized. This, of course,
raises the question, Why bother performing this
kind of research if the results can’t be generalized? In our reading of postmodern perspectives, we believe that generalizations can be
gathered from postmodern research; however,
researchers must be reflective in how they
generalize. To return to our example, a conclusion or result of the study might be the design
of a high school social studies curriculum that
takes into account and challenges students assumptions about technology and history, and
social suppositions about race, class, and gender
while still preparing students to excel on standardized tests. While such a conclusion or design
could not easily be generalized to another context, the approach (eclectic, interdisciplinary,
reflective) and assumptions (contingent) are
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transferable to other research environments. In
fact, postmodern IT researchers could develop
and grow a methodological and theoretical
framework on which a more responsive field
could be built.
CONCLUSION
Postmodernism’s primary contribution—perhaps, to use Solomon’s terminology, its true
agenda—is the development of multiple ways of
understanding and developing instruction and
design. Postmodernism’s role in IT should not
be cast as “navel gazing,” relativism disguised
as pluralism, or deviation from rigor and
quality. Postmodern ways of knowing go
beyond Solomon’s “core concepts” of pluralism,
the social construction of knowledge, criticism
as inquiry, and systems thinking (p. 15). Because
of their resistance to binaries, postmodern
theories cannot and should not be easily divided
into facile oppositions of skeptical and affirmative, as Solomon notes (p. 7).
Postmodern perspectives challenge fields of
study such as IT to constantly question and
redefine their boundaries in relation to other
fields. Perhaps a more productive goal would
not be, as Solomon suggests, to “simplify subject
matter and render it less complex” (p. 6) but to
use postmodern frameworks to recognize the
complex social, cultural, and political dynamics
that have implications for the negotiations of
race, class, gender, and ethnicity within diverse
learning environments and that are set in motion when learning with technologies and
media.
ADDITIONAL READINGS
For those interested in postmodern approaches to IT, we offer the following list of
authors, some of whom are mentioned in
Solomon’s article, categorized by general area,
in addition to the citations listed in this
response. This list is not exhaustive and should
be considered as a starting point for postmodern
inquiry in IT.
• Critical Theory and Education (Michael Apple,
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Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren)
• Discourse Analysis (Mikhail Bakhtin, James P.
Gee, Norman Fairclough)
• Foundations of
Postmodernism (Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jean Francois Lyotard)
• Ethnography
and Education (Michelle Fine,
Shirley Brice Heath, Jay MacLeod, Paul Willis)
• Media and Cultural Studies (Ien Ang, Julie D’Acci, John Fiske, Lawrence Grossberg, Stuart
Hall, Douglas Kellner, David Morley)
• Multiculturalism, Postmodernism and Education
(Gloria Ladson-Billings, Cameron McCarthy,
Christine Sleeter, Cornel West)
• Postcolonialism (Homi K. Bhabha, Paul Gilroy,
Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Trinh T. Minhha)
• Postmodernism and Curriculum (William Doll,
William Pinar, Patrick Slattery)
• Postmodernism,
Feminism and Education
(Debrah Britzman, Suzanne Damarin, bell
hooks, Patti Lather)
• Postmodernism
and
Pedagogy
(Elizabeth
Ellsworth)
• Technology and Culture (Donna Haraway, N.
Katherine Hayles, Bruno Latour, Neil
Postman, Jennifer Daryl Slack, Rob Shields,
Allucquère Rosanne Stone, Sherry Turkle)
Rick Voithofer is Assistant Professor of Cultural
Studies and Educational Technology at The Ohio
State University.
Alan Foley is Assistant Professor of Instructional
Technology at North Carolina State University.
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