A Conflict of Paradigms: Social Epistemology and the Collapse of Literary Education

(Paperback)

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A Conflict of Paradigms provides a historical analysis of literary education following the trend of radical pedagogy introduced in the 1980s. Rebecca K. Webb thoroughly sets the ground for debate by focusing equally on the advocates of radical pedagogy and the setbacks encountered in practice. Higher education has encountered a crisis as the humanitarian ideology of a liberal education conflicts with the corporatization of the University. Presenting theory with great clarity, Webb fully addresses many problems and contradictions faced in today's classroom, including the emphasis on teaching skills related to the professional world rather than critical thinking and the institutionalization of Romantic individualism in the humanities curriculum. Thorough and controversial, A Conflict of Paradigms is essential reading for educators and students of education, cultural studies, and English literature.

Reviews

For the past two decades, social epistemology has made the case at both a theoretical and a practical level that knowledge is constitutively social. However, this message has been mostly aimed at the natural sciences. Rebecca Webb has decisively broadened the fields horizons by bringing social epistemology into the heartland of humanistic education, enhancing it with her distinctive brand of critical pedagogy. Readers will be especially gratified by the sensitive intermingling of more general theoretical discussions with careful treatments of sample student papers from Webbs own classes. -- Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, University of Warwick, author of Nietzschean Meditations: Untimely Thoughts at the Dawn of the Transhuman Era

Author Bio

Dr. Rebecca Webb is an instructor of English at College of San Mateo.