The Creation of Reality: A Constructivist Epistemology of Journalism and Journalism Education© D.M. Hutton

Citation

Hutton, D.M. (2011), "The Creation of Reality: A Constructivist Epistemology of Journalism and Journalism Education© D.M. Hutton", Kybernetes, Vol. 40 No. 5/6, pp. 395-935. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2011.40.5_6.395.2

This recently published book was originally published in German under the title Die Beobachtung des Beobachters – Universitätsverlag Konstanz 2006. It has now been translated into English by A.R. Koek and W.R. Koek. Professor Dr Bernhard Pöerksen is from the Eberhard Karls Universitat Tubingen in Germany and is well known in the fields covered by this journal.

The publishers write that:

Constructivism has been traded as a new paradigm by its advocates, and criticised by its opponents as legitimating deceit and lies, as justifying a trendy post‐modern “anything goes”.

In this book, the author draws up a new rationale for constructivist thinking and charts out directions for the imaginative examinations of personal certainties of others, of ideologies great and small.

The kernel of this thesis by Dr Pöerksen is that our understanding of journalism and, in particular, the education and training of journalists would profit substantially from constructive insights.

It is claimed that these insights instigate an original kind of scepticism and that they provide the underpinnings of a modern type of didactics oriented by the autonomy of learners as well as supplying sustaining arguments for a radical ethic of responsibility in journalism.

To do this the book has been structured so that an explicit introduction is given which is followed by sections on:

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  Foundations. Premises and postulates.

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  Educational objectives. Deepening critical awareness of science, language, media – epistemology, and a deepening ethical awareness.

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  Ways of learning. Deepening awareness of autonomy, the reality of the study of journalism, and a summary in the form of theses.

The book also includes an extensive bibliography.

It is hoped to include a another review of the book in the upcoming issues of this journal.