Before five days Jack asked us following question:
"In relation to the social validity of practitioner-researcher accounts
I'm wondering if anyone is using something better than Habermas'
understanding?"
I carefully read Habermas's philosophical accounts when I wrote my MA
dissertation. He put emphases on mutual understanding of participants in
communicational process which leads to the communicative action as
opposed to the strategic action. Under strategic action he implies
gaining particular interests which is obtained by external influence
(gratification, terror, seduction etc.). (Habermas, 1990, p. 597) But
what Habermas means under concept of 'mutual understanding'? If we
peruse his text we could realise that he always emphasise cognitive
aspect of understanding:
"Furthermore, as language is the specific medium of understanding at the
sociocultural stage of evolution, I want to go a step further and single
out explicit speech actions from other forms of communicative action. I
shall ignore nonverbalized actions and bodily expressions… The goal of
coming to an understanding is to bring about an agreement that
terminates in the subjective mutuality of reciprocal understanding,
shared knowledge, mutual trust, and accord with one another. Agreement
is based on recognition of the corresponding validity claims of
comprehensibility, truth, truthfulness, and rightness. We can see that
the word understanding is ambiguous. In its minimal meaning it indicates
that two subjects understand a linguistic expression in the same way;
its maximal meaning is that between the two there exists an accord
concerning the rightness of an utterance in relation to a mutually
recognized normative background. In addition, two participants in
communication can come to an understanding about something in the world,
and they can make their intentions understandable to one another."
(Habermas, 1979, p. 1,3)
Harriet's, Sarah's and Jane's last postings have helped me to express by
word what I already tacitly knew that miss in Habermas's concept of
understanding. He reduced whole richness of our human understanding on
cognitive aspect. I do not think so that we can understand somebody else
if we can not passionately sympathize with other person, if we can not
feel, know, live our needs as human needs.
I realized in my first attempt of action research that quality of our
action research did not depend on quality of methodological procedure
but it first of all depend on quality of our relationship. When we
started with our ongoing action research project, where we try to help
each others to learn haw to implement action research in our practice,
we did not start talk about philosophy, principles, methods, procedures
etc. of action research projects but about ourself. First of all, I
invited my friends to introduce themselves. After that I asked them to
express what they like to each others and what they want to find out
about each others. Through this two simple activity we find out to much
about each others and crate climate of confidence. Our following task
was to express our individual values. After that we organised our first
face to face meeting where we introduced each others in the flesh. This
process we named as 'team building'. After that we continued with tasks
which were devoted to action research, but it is not just academic
conversation but lively process where we try not just to learn something
new but to maintain our good relationship. Before two days grandmother
of our friend Marina died. She sent me SMS to inform me about that. I
informed each members of team and each of them expressed sympathy to
her. I talked with Marina today and she said that she appreciate too
much our compassion. She was impressed that each members of our team
whom she knows just through our cooperation offered sympathy on death of
her grandmother.
Our interest is not to contribute ideas of action research in
epistemological sense because we realised (in words or tacitly) that our
main interest is not abstract science but our reach relationships which
only can contribute to improving of our educational practice. Whatever
we learned during all of these years, we learned because our good
relationship. When some relationship was broken then process of learning
was also ended. Because of that I believe that process of action
research is process of making relationship where we passionately and
compassionately learn from each other how to fully live our individual
and shared values, or simply how to become better friends.
----------------------------------------------
Habermas, J. (1979) Communication and the evolution of society. London;
Heinemann
Katunarić, V. (1990) Teorija društva u frankfurtskoj školi. Naprijed:
Zagreb. (Croatian translation of Habermas, J (1984) Vorstudien und
Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikative Handelns. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt/M.)
Jack Whitehead wrote:
>I like Brian's question:
>
>What safeguards are there about slanted data
>collection, partial analysis, distorted consciousness,
>political spin, confusing and esoteric vocabulary?
>
>Do let's revisit this in the review phase when we clarify the criiteria we use to judge
>the quality of our practitioner-research.
>
>In relation to the social validity of practitioner-researcher accounts I'm wondering if
>anyone is using something better than Habermas' understanding when he writes:
>
>"The speaker must choose a comprehensible expression so that speaker and hearer
>can understand one another. The speaker must have the intention of communicating
>a true proposition (or a propositional content, the existential presuppositions of
>which are satisfied) so that the hearer can share the knowledge of the speaker. The
>speaker must want to express his intentions truthfully so that the hearer can believe
>the utterance of the speaker (can trust him). Finally, the speaker mush choose an
>utterance that is right so that the hearer can accept the utterance and speaker and
>hearer can agree with on another in the utterance with respect to a recognized
>normative background. Moreover, communicative action can continue undisturbed
>only as long as participants suppose that the validity claims they reciprocally raise
>are justified." (pp 2-3)
>
>Habermas, J. (1976) Communication and the evolution of society. London;
>Heinemann
>
>Love Jack.
>
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>Ova je poruka provjerena NOD32 antivirusnim sistemom.
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