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GLOSSARY INQUIRY: MODERNISM
An epistemological orientation associated with Analytic Science and Reductionism; it has underpinned much of the West’s thinking in the past two centuries.
Modernism assumes that objective truth is “out there” waiting to be discovered, that careful reasoning and experimentation are the ways to achieve it, and that we are progressing in a gradual and linear manner towards complete and total knowledge of the universe. Strongly influenced by Cartesian dualisms (mind/body, self/other), modernists traditionally divide the human and physical world in such a way that they can be objectively observed, quantified, categorized and controlled.
Twentieth Century education systems are a largely modernist project. This can be seen, for example, in its orientation towards efficiency, its desire for control over instruction and learning outcomes, and the transactional view of learning that constructs students as empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge.
See related terms: Postmodernism, Knowledge, Learning, Theories of Learning.
