Postmodern Professionalism Education in Medical Education: Pros and Cons

Abstract

In educational goals, postmodernism emphasizes on individual freedoms, the institutionalization of pluralism, the strengthening of self-organized morality in learners and educational principles, avoiding dogmatism and fighting against systematicity. In educational methods, it advocates being learner-centered and paying attention to marginalized/disadvantaged individuals. Postmodernism focusing on pluralism and relativism is a widely accepted paradigm in today’s social, cultural, economic and political lives.Although postmodernism enjoys many strong points, such as “fighting against globalization” and “emphasizing dynamism”, it has also many weak points. The most important of these are the contradictory structures of theory, the ignoring of certain facts and knowledge, and the excessive praise of given internal values. These weak points confront us with the question of how to put the postmodernist perspective in the curriculum in medical education. The point is: we can be postmodernists in theory, but is it possible to be postmodern in practice? How can we design the curriculum with a postmodernist perspective, while our educational approaches are still in a modernist framework? The new generations may have been born into a postmodernist world, but have they really internalized this world? In this article, firstly, the philosophy of postmodernism, its relationship with modernism and its educational projections will be mentioned. Then, the importance of postmodernism in professionalism education and its reflections in medical education will be discussed. Finally, controversial points about postmodernist professionalism education will be addressed. © 2020, Turkish Medical Association. All rights reserved.