Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Critical Constructivism and Postformalism 863
order to engage in this aspect of the reconstruction of self, students and teachers must transcend
the mechanist conception of the static and unified self that moves through life with the 106 IQ—it
is 106 today, it was yesterday, and it will be tomorrow. While the process of disidentification is
urgent, we cannot neglect the search for alternate discourses in literature, history, popular culture,
the community, subjugated and indigenous knowledges, and in our imaginations. My friend Peter
McLaren tells me that we need to find a diversity of possibilities of what we might become
by recovering and reinterpreting what we once were. While we might use this to change our
conception of reality, we must see this change of conception—this change of mind—as only the
first step in a sets of actions designed to change what is referred to as reality.
TERMS FOR READERS
Hyperreality—Jean Baudrillard’s concept: the contemporary cultural landscape marked by the
omnipresence of electronic information. In such a landscape, individuals begin to lose touch with
the traditional notions of time, community, self, and history.
Ontology—The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of being, that asks what it means to
be in the world.
Postformalism—A sociocognitive theory that blurs boundaries separating cognition, culture,
society, epistemology, history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, economics, and politics. Postformalism
transcends much of the cognitive theory typically associated with Piagetian and many other
theories of cognitive development. While more positivist and mechanistic cognitive science has
associated disinterestedness, objectivity, adult cognition, and problem solving with higher-order
thinking, postformalism challenges such concepts. In this context postformalism links itself to
the concept of alternate rationalities. These new rationalities employ forms of analysis sensitive
to signs and symbols, the power of context in relation to thinking, the role of emotion and feeling
in cognitive activity, and the value of the psychoanalytical process as it taps into the recesses of
(un)consciousness. In the spirit of critical theory and critical pedagogy, postformalism attempts
to democratize intelligence. In this activity, postformalist study issues of purpose, meaning, and
value. Do certain forms of cognition and cognitive theory undermine the quest for justice? Do
certain forms of psychological research cause observers to view problematic ways of seeing as if
they involved no issues of power and privilege?