This symposium is related to Educational Philosophy and Theory journal’s theme number After postmodernism in educational theory? Special issue for 50^th Celebration of the journal. In this symposium and following the journal invitation, we ask what comes after postmodernism and how this will affect educational theory. The journal issued an invitation and received 170 responses, each of 500 words which will be published at the end of 2018. In the invitation, the editors (Michael A. Peters, Marek Tesar and Liz Jackson) wrote:

"In this experiment, we invited readers and contributors of EPAT to respond to the question of what comes after postmodernism and how this will affect educational theory. Below there are a number of statements by various authors that provide an orientation to the topic and help to frame the excerise. This is an exercise in collective writing. We invite contributors to submit a contribution of 500 words (and no more than 5 references) to us as joint editors by November 30, 2017... "

We included following quote from MIchael Peters (2008):

"‘The Ends of Postmodernism?’ The question mark acts to recoil upon a set of discourses and cultural phenomenon that, at least in the popular imaginary, proclaims in apocalyptic tones “the end”: the end of modernism, the end of metaphysics, the end of humanism, the end of Man, the death of God, the end of value. It resonates with its modernist Hegelian sibling discourses, both rightist and leftist, that still carry some theoretical weight: the end of ideology; the end of history, the end of the welfare state, the end of communism or capitalism. And, at the same time, it shares the same kind of popular expectation of something that follows “the end”: whether it be “the new”, “the beginning”, or “a return”, historically speaking. In one sense these eschatological narratives of endings (and beginnings), …. are endemic to Western culture and help define both its cultural specificity and its sources of renewal. "Postmodernism", like a host of other similar terms christened with the same prefix, such as “Post-Impressionism” and “Post-Expressionism”, employs a reactive rhetorical device or strategy, betraying what I call a “naming anxiety”. Reading the signs of exhaustion – an end or completion – the users of this device, following many precedents, lacked the confidence to name “the new” and fell back upon the strategy of naming what it is not. This process of negative definition is, intellectually, both less risky and less ambitious. Charles Jencks (1996: 14–15) has recorded seventy such related uses, including “post-industrial”, “postminimalism”, “post-Marxism” and “post-liberal era”, and charted a genealogy of “postmodernism” in terms of its pre-history (1870–1950), its positive definition (1950–1980), and its final phase (after 1981) characterized by attacks upon it and its anthologisation"

- Michael A. Peters, (2008) “Apocalyptic Thinking Now: The Ends of Postmodernism” Review of Contemporary Philosophy, https://www.addletonacademicpublishers.com/contents-rcp/113-volume-7-2008/494-apocalyptic-thinking-now-the-ends-of-postmodernism - Charles Jencks, (1996) What is Post-Modernism (What Is???), academy Press