Same Words, Different Meanings: Notes Toward a Typology of Postmodern Social Work Education

Abstract

Active use of postmodern theory, with its lexicon of words like deconstruction, meaning, sign and code, can transform the social work classroom into an extraordinary intellectual center for critical thinking and clinical debate. Perhaps paradoxically, this new classroom also needs guidelines. Guidelines can be organized into a typology, and what is presented in this article is a typology to help social work educators and students clarify how to use postmodern devices. These devices allow for an especially intensive exploration of representations of culture and language, self and other, individual and community, power and marginalization. Developed as a series of tables, this typology contrasts three classroom models: the generic, the traditional and the postmodern view of key segments of the social work curriculum.

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