Abstract:
Pressure to change from a co-operative, collegial form of management to a top-down corporate managerialist form in universities and schools carries some superficial promise for education, but also a deeper threat to it. This paper outlines briefly the particular effects of such promise and threat on problem-based learning, and why superficial promise should be treated with caution and threat taken seriously. It then considers more fully how problem-based learning could turn such promise and threat to the advantage of educative learning, particularly in regard to overcoming such debilitating and paralysing dichotomies as those of fact/value, theory/practice, and the like in education, with their consequential effects in social and political life. It does so by making use of the development of explanatory critique by Bhaskar and others.