Continuing education in postmodernity: four semantic tensions

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Abstract
This paper explores, analytically and speculatively, the implications of postmodernity for the selection and formulation of descriptive concepts in continuing education practice. Postmodernity is seen as being contemporary culture that is informed by: (1) a belief in and commitment to the interpretative nature of all perception, the contingency of all belief, and the ontological contingency of being; and (2) a profound scepticism towards all claims to the privileging of knowledge. Within such a framework, continuing education is seen as tending strongly towards being: reflexively contextualized, indeterminate, expressive, open, participative, heterodox, phenomenal, critical and de‐differentiated. These features and tendencies are used as a framework for the postulation of four interrelated semantic tensions which are seen as arising in postmodern continuing education practice. Each tension is viewed as two opposing inclinations, such that for each one there are good reasons for inclining towards it, but that to do so ‐ and to the extent that one does so ‐ is to limit, compromise or threaten the possibility of satisfying the contrary inclination. The four tensions are descriptively labelled as: aggregation versus fragmentation, consistency versus flexibility, description versus evaluation, and associationality versus immediacy.

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