Deliberative communication: a pragmatist proposal (original) (raw)

Abstract

This paper seeks to make use of later works of Habermas in the field of education. The theme, developed out of the pragmatic tradition, is that of deliberative communication as a central form of activity in schools. This implies a displacement of traditional teaching and learning as the central form of activity to the creation of meaning through deliberative communication. Deliberative communication can be understood as an endeavour to ensure that each individual takes a stand by listening, deliberating, seeking arguments, and evaluating, while at the same time there is a collective effort to find values and norms on which everyone can agree.

Acknowledgements

This paper, like the others in this issue of JCS, was presented at the AERA convention in Chicago in 2003, as part of the symposium ‘Deliberative communication: Applying Habermas to education’. The title of my paper at that time was ‘Characteristics of deliberative communication—a pragmatist proposal’. The paper was also presented, in a similar form, at the 2003 Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA) Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, and at the 2003 European Education Research Association Conference in Hamburg, Germany. All four of us (the authors of this and the following three papers) wish to express our thanks for the penetrating critique of our papers given by Nicholas Burbules, critic at AERA, and also to the editor of JCS, Ian Westbury. This paper and the following papers by Carleheden (Citation2006) and Boman (Citation2006) are produced within the project ‘Education as deliberative communication—pre‐conditions, possibilities and consequences’ financed by the Swedish Research Council.

Notes

1. In using the term ‘democratic conception of education’, I am making a two‐fold reference, first to chapter 7 of Dewey’s (Citation1980) Democracy and Education and second to my own Curriculum as a Political Problem (Englund Citation1986), where I develop a democratic conception of education as a third educational conception in the history of education in Sweden (the first two being referred to as ‘patriarchal’ and ‘scientific‐rational’). In my ‘The public and the text’ (Englund Citation1996: 12) the democratic conception of education is seen and presented as an educational and political philosophical project, and this is what is developed further in the present series of papers, which also refer to the other educational conceptions mentioned.

2. This paper extends a short earlier presentation (Englund Citation2000b), produced on the initiative of the Swedish National Agency for Education. One elaboration of the idea was presented to the NERA conference in Stockholm (Englund Citation2001). The concept of deliberative communication was originally developed in two earlier papers (Englund Citation1998, Citation1999a).

3. The development of this concept has been multi‐faceted. It is used by the US political scientist Besette (Citation1980) and has subsequently been developed and given different authoritative interpretations by Manin (Citation1987) and Cohen (Citation1989) and, during the 1990s, by Rawls (Citation1993), Habermas (Citation1996), and Elster (Citation1998). Current overviews are provided by Bohman and Rehg (Citation1997) and Dryzek (Citation2000).

4. Among representative researchers in this tradition one can mention classical figures such as J. J. Rousseau, J. S. Mill, and G. D. H. Cole and, among current names, Carole Pateman, Benjamin Barber, and Robert Bellah.

5. Representative researchers include Jürgen Habermas, Amy Gutmann, Dennis Thompson, David Miller, Joshua Cohen, and John Dryzek.

6. I will not elaborate further on this question here, but merely stress that such a perspective emphasizes learning through communication.

7. The educational use of these perspectives has, among other matters, been concerned withthe relationship between scientific and commonplace concepts, implying a criticism of the tradition prevailing within science education.

8. There are many important sources of inspiration for this component of pluralism, but from the recent literature and debate in which authorities and traditions have been questioned and the view of education as a public space has been underlined, I mention Gutmann (Citation1987) and Nussbaum (Citation1997). Their ideas are not original, but both of them have clearly articulated—Gutmann with regard to comprehensive schools, and Nussbaum in the case of higher education—the need to make use of the educational space to move from the private (good) to the public (good), in a process where one’s own values and statements may be tested in argumentation against those of others.

9. I have been primarily inspired by its development by Norwegian mother‐tongue didacticians such as Dysthe (Citation1996, Citation2002) and Hoel (Citation2001).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tomas Englund

Tomas Englund is professor of education in the Department of Education, Örebro University, S‐701 82 Örebro, Sweden; e‐mail: tomas.englund@pi.oru.se. His research interests centre on curriculum theory and didactics, curriculum history, political socialization and citizenship education, and the philosophical aspects of education. He directs the research group Education and Democracy and is co‐editor of the Swedish journal with the same name (in Swedish, Utbildning & Demokrati). His most recent book is Skillnad och konsekvens [Difference and consequences] (Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur, 2004).

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