ANDY HARGREAVES, MARGARIDA FERNANDES andMAREE DINANTHOMPSON

BIG CHANGE QUESTIONDOES CRITICAL THEORY HAVE ANY PRACTICAL VALUE FOR

EDUCATIONAL CHANGE?

ANDY HARGREAVES

We are pleased to include the following Big Change Question on the prac-tical contribution of critical theory to educational change – involving Dr.,Maree DinanThompson from James Cook University and Dr. MargaridaFernandes from the University of the Algarve. We are sad to announcethat during the week she was undertaking a final draft of the manuscript,Margarida Fernandes and her husband died in a road accident in Portugal.This is a tragic toll both to her family and to her profession.

Margarida Fernandes was one of Europe’s leading scholars in the fieldof educational change, and her recent book on curriculum change inpostmodern times has provided a major contribution to the analysis ofeducational change in Portugal. She had an extraordinary grasp of thecritical writings of Jurgen Habermas, which she presents with great depthand clarity in her contribution here.

Dr. Fernandes was an outstanding scholar who provided dedicatedand successful service to the educational research community throughthe Deanship of her own Faculty at the University of the Algarve andthrough her leadership in the Portuguese Education Research Community.Margarida Fernandes was not only a good colleague but also a friendwhom my former colleagues and I at the International Centre for Educa-tional Change in Toronto came to know, like and appreciate very much. Sheand her husband, the First Governor of the Algarve after the Portugueserevolution, passionately pursued the achievement of democracy andequality in education with the full knowledge, deep memory and personalpain of understanding what it is like not to have these things. Politic-ally and professionally dedicated, and disarmingly personable, MargaridaFernandes was also an inspiring lifelong learner as evidenced in her rapidrecent mastery of English. We are honoured to be able to include herlast intellectual contribution in the pages of this journal. Her work, hercompany and her commitment will be sorely missed by all those in thisprofession who knew her and her work.

Journal of Educational Change 4: 181–193, 2003.© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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MARGARIDA FERNANDES

Questioning the practical value of critical theory for educational changeis a considerable challenge, and a critical question for me as an educator,as many of my energies and thoughts have been based on these theories.To better support my answer to this question, I will begin by analyzingthe meaning of critical theory, relating its reconstruction to Habermas’stheories of knowledge, constitutive interests and communicative action.These theories have been (and still are) largely used in education as apowerful framework for interpreting issues in the domain of educationalchange for providing a better understanding of its relevance and as a basisfor a theory of action towards emancipation.

According to Ägger (1998), critical theory is one of the theoriesincluded in critical social theory – a theory cluster, as he says – sharingcommon assumptions and features with other theories such as post-modernism, feminism, multiculturalism and cultural studies. Briefly, thoseassumptions can be summarized as follows: (i) knowledge is not a reflec-tion of the inert world, but an active construction by scientists andothers and is not value free; (ii) society is characterized by historicity,and is therefore susceptible to change; (iii) domination is structural, andpeople’s everyday lives are affected by larger social institutions, such aspolitics, economics, culture, discourse, gender and race; (iv) the structuresof domination are seen as being reproduced in people’s consciousness,forcing them to adapt to fixed patterns; (v) critical theory’s main role isto raise consciousness about present exploitation, and to demonstrate thepossibility of a better future free from all kinds of alienation; (vi) to achieveliberation and freedom it is essential to understand the dialectical relation-ship between structure and human agency, since knowledge of structurecan help people change social conditions.

Habermas, the leading critical theorist of the second generation of theFrankfurt School, has considered the reconstruction of a critical theory ofsociety to be crucial:

I want to maintain that the program of early critical theory foundered not on this or thatcontingent circumstance, but from the exhaustion of the paradigm of consciousness. I shallargue that a change in paradigm to the theory of communicative action makes it possibleto return to the undertaking that was interrupted with the critique of instrumental reason;and this will permit us to take up once again the since-neglected tasks of a critical theoryof society (Habermas, 1984, p. 386).

Knowledge, constitutive interests and communicative action are themain theoretical components supporting this purpose of reconstructing acritical theory of society. I will start by briefly introducing Habermas’sepistemology.

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In Habermas’s view, knowledge is grounded in human cognitiveinterests that guide the process of inquiry and organize our knowledgeof reality. Cognitive interests are connected with certain conditions ofsocial life, such as work, interaction and power. Work refers to the waysin which human beings control their environment in order to surviveand preserve themselves; interaction indicates the ways in which wesearch for reciprocal understanding through consensual norms; powerrefers to the means by which people enter into relations of dominationand subordination, so that social life imposes constraints upon individualaction.

These conditions provide the experiential and historical ground forthree different cognitive interests, which are related to three differentareas: the technical control of nature, the reciprocal understanding, andthe emancipation or individual growth.

The technical interests express the need to control and manipulate theenvironment, so as to satisfy basic needs. They are the source of the instru-mental knowledge, where causal explanations are orientated to predictionand control of external conditions. Empirical-analytical sciences corre-spond to these cognitive interests, whereas economic production refers tothe social sphere of action.

The practical interests are originated in social-cultural life where indi-viduals communicate through language in order to promote the mutualunderstanding of individual interests and needs. Practical knowledge refersto the understanding and communication in everyday life situations, andtakes place through language. Interpretive sciences use qualitative methodsto approach this kind of knowledge. The cultural sphere of meaning is itssocial sphere of action.

The emancipatory interests underpin the capacity of acting rationallyand of making rational decisions. Only these interests liberate conscious-ness from forces of domination. The emancipation of ideologies dependson the capacity to act rationally and to be self-determined and self-reflexive. Self-determination means the capacity to be autonomous, andself-reflection refers to the capacity to critically examine the culturalcontext and traditions where one is inserted, as well as one’s own affectiveand emotional dispositions and constitution.

These interests and respective rationalities have been applied to manyareas in political science, sociology, philosophy, and education. As aresult of their comprehensiveness, Habermas’s theories have been usedin many different aspects in education: educational theories (Aronowitz& Giroux, 1991; Morrow & Torres, 2002; Young, 1989); adult education(Mezirow, 1985); educational evaluation (Broadfoot, 1985; Fernandes,

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1998; Norris, 1990); educational administration (Bates, 1983); educa-tional research (Carr & Kemmis, 1986); curriculum studies (Apple,1982; Fernandes, 2001; Giroux, 1988; MacDonald, 1975; Pinar, 1975;Van Manen, 1977); teacher professional development (Hargreaves, 1994;Pérez-Gómez, 1992); and teacher education (Baldwin, 1987; Beyer &Zeichner, 1987; Giroux & McLaren, 1987). For a more comprehensivereview, see Ewert (1991).

In education, technical interests are concerned with a greater efficacyof educational systems. According to instrumental rationality, educationalsystems work as input-output systems, where resources and raw materialenter one end and the final product – the educated student – comes outat the other end. Inside the educational systems, the curriculum and theteaching are seen as means to control specific purposes; purposes which arenot discussed. Educational difficulties are ascribed to teachers’ or students’inadequate behaviours or to the inefficient use of resources. The instru-mental view of education attributes to educational research the role ofrevealing the variables present in cause-effect relationships that can bringmore efficiency to the system.

The practical interests focus on practical situations including educa-tional practices in their complexity and resistance to classification andsystematization. They show that it is not possible to achieve a unique anddefinitive reading of educational aims, which means that teachers haveto exert their professional judgement and make decisions guided by thecriteria obtained through experience. Practical knowledge enables teachersto realize how others understand their actions. It is this kind of practicalknowledge that makes individual life histories so important, as well as themethods that are used.

The emancipatory cognitive interests provide “the epistemologicalbasis for Habbermas’s notion of critique which is alleged to be the functionof the critical social sciences” (Lakomski, 1994), and consequently alsoimportant for educational theory. The emancipation or liberation of ideolo-gies will depend on the capacity to act rationally and to be self-determinedand self-reflexive. Self-reflection enables us to overcome the limitationscaused by the internalization of social rules. Later on, Habermas statesthat self-reflection is not enough to liberate us from ideology and that therelationship between freedom and self-reflection can only be understoodhistorically.

The ground and possibility of Critical Theory lie precisely in theemancipatory interest, just as the emancipation of ideologies depends onthe capacity to act rationally and to be self-determined and self-reflexive.

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The emancipatory interests depend upon being responsible and committedto the changing world.

With this emancipatory interest and communicative action theory,Habermas tried to rethink the epistemological foundations of CriticalTheory. As Alway (1995) puts it:

Theory with practical intent seeks not only to understand the world, but also to transform it.The practical intent of such theory – its orientation to changing the world – is the expressionof an emancipatory interest (p. 1).

Communicative action led to a paradigm shift; from a philosophy ofconsciousness where the subject with his consciousness is alone withthe object in a solitary relation to an intersubjective relation based on atheory of language and communication. Habermas’s communicative actionshould also be looked at as a way of relating theory to a practical intent,which happens in the reflexive process, where the act of knowing coincideswith emancipation.

Communicative action is distinct from manipulatively oriented strategicaction where the self-other relationship is characterized by calculation,conformity or self-preservation. In communicative action, the other isviewed as a partner or a potential partner in the process of reachingunderstanding, co-operation being the characteristic of this relationship.

In communicative action, the focus is on the process of coming to anagreement in order to coordinate action. Language has an important rolein reaching this reciprocal understanding that can be seen as a process ofcollective learning (Morrow & Torres, 2002). For Habermas, consensus –a goal of communicative action – is based on the power of the strongestargument in an ideal speech situation.

Ägger (1998) stresses the importance of Habermas’s communicativeaction for emancipation:

Only through interaction and communication can people master society, forming socialmovements and achieving power. Communication provides an ethical basis for criticaltheory, represented in what Habermas contends is the basic intention of communicationto form consensus through rational discussion between interlocutors (p. 94).

Relevance of Habermas’s communicative action is also stressed byBottomore (1984) when he states that:

Habermas’s discussion of communicative action and the emancipatory interest, as well as. . . his sustained argument that present-day questions of social policy have to be seen asissues for public political debate, not as ‘technical’ problems . . . which can be resolved by‘experts’ in social science, is the most influential aspect of his thought so far (p. 78).

Habermas’s theory of communicative action is relevant to our argumentin two different ways: in establishing the conditions of the possibility of

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reflexive learning, and in the revitalization of the Public Sphere, aspectsfully stressed by Morrow and Torres (2002).

Habermas’s (1975) concept of reflexive learning is essential to thecontext of emancipation. He distinguishes between non-reflexive andreflexive learning, as follows:

Non-reflexive learning takes place in action contexts in which implicitly raised theoreticaland practical validity claims are naively taken for granted and accepted or rejected withoutdiscursive consideration.

Reflexive learning takes place through discourses in which we thematize practicalvalidity claims that have become problematic or have been rendered problematic throughinstitutionalised doubt, and redeem or dismiss them on that basis of arguments (p. 15).

Although Habermas in his later work rarely focuses on specific educa-tional issues, “they are implied by his general understanding of reflexivelearning and the dialogical basis of ideal speech” (Morrow & Torres, 2002,p. 115). According to these authors, Habermas’s critical reflexivity andcommunicative action can be compared to the techniques used by Freire toproduce conscientization, a process aiming at people’s empowerment.

For Habermas, the self-reflexive discourses of collective learning arerelated not to the individual, but to societal empowerment and the rehabili-tation of the public sphere, which is one of his main concerns. Besidesgiving attention to the “conditions of possibility of further expansions ofdemocratization in more advanced, liberal democratic societies” (Morrow& Torres, 2002, p. 137), Habermas believed that social movements areimportant as they initiate processes of collective learning that opposedominant normative systems.

As Alway (1995) stresses:

The practical intent of the theory of Communicative Action is not a revolutionarytransformation of society, but the creation and protection of spaces within which aradical concept of democracy as a process of shared learning carried out in and throughcommunicative action, might flourish (p. 127).

The same idea seems to be shared by Morrow and Torres (2002) forwhom Habermas has contributed to the revitalization of the public sphere.

Habermas’s paradigm shift from a perspective based on consciousness(or subject-object relation) to an intersubjective relation based on languagealters the dynamics of history and social evolution and the dominantconception of action, as

the old formula and conventional standards for theory with practical intent collapse. . . .

Emancipatory politics is no longer about the struggle to gain power in order to impose aparticular claim or interpretation; rather, the struggle is about expanding the opportunityfor groups to determine, and live according to, their own claims and interpretations (Alway,1995, p. 136).

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In the light of this exploration of Habermas’s work, let us now return tothe question: “Does critical theory have any practical value for educationalchange?” Or, in other words, “Has Habermas’s critical theory a practicalintent?”

The answer is not easy. With Alway (1995), I think we have to createand give attention to the spaces within which we work and how we candeepen the concept and practice of democracy, thinking of learning as aprocess that can evolve through communicative action. To better under-stand this, we should consider the multiple situations, generally taken forgranted, where critical theory can help us, either improving our under-standing of them, or acting in a way that can liberate us from subordination.I have tried to summarize some of the aspects in which critical theorycan help us, questioning and looking critically at curriculum theoriesand models, the values for which they stand, curriculum development,curriculum change and innovation, the reasons and purposes of curriculumchange, and teacher participation in and ownership of these changes.Critical theory can also be seen as a basis for a critical action research,helping the empowerment of teachers and supporting their actions ascritical mediators. Finally, critical theory can help teachers, students andthe community in the political sphere, to struggle for the public schoolas a place for democracy. To achieve this, we need to develop people’scommunicative capacities for engaging in rational discussion as a basis ofdemocracy.

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University of the AlgarveFaroPortugal