Tomas Englund

Deliberative Communication: A Pragmatist Proposal.

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.

Rethinking Democracy and Education: Towards an Education of Deliberative Citizens.

Neo-pragmatism focuses on communication as a democratic form of life. It therefore creates new visions for the relationship between democracy and education. Models for deliberative democracy inspired by neo-pragmatism are explicitly based on the need for education of citizens in deliberative capabilities and attitudes. The idea of deliberative democracy as an educational process is one where individuals bring different perspectives to on-going communication, which is here presented as an important way to interpret John Dewey, specifically his Democracy and Education. This approach to reading his work is compared initially with other and earlier ways of reading his work, i.e., the educational philosophies and movements of progressivism and reconstructionism.

Bringing professional responsibility back in

Research on how higher education institutions work with professional formation indicates that insufficient attention is currently paid to issues of professional responsibility and ethics. In the light of such findings, there is increasing concern about issues related to learning professional responsibility. This article concentrates on different meanings given to professional responsibility. Drawing on the idea of ‘social trustee professionalism’ and the recent rhetoric and practices of new public management, the concept of professional responsibility is deconstructed and discussed in light of the types of logic and implications generated by the use of the concepts of professional ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’. The analysis indicates that mechanisms of accountability seem to be ‘triumphing’ over responsibility in today’s governance systems. It is argued that we need to ‘bring professional responsibility back in’, to ensure that moral and societal responsibilities become the driving force for professionals while accounting systems support the overall purpose of professional work.

The discourse on equivalence in Swedish education policy

During the last few decades, the concept of equivalence has assumed an increasingly important role in Swedish educational policy, and at the same time the actual meaning of equivalence has been given different authoritative interpretations. The shift in significance which the concept has undergone seems to be not only an aspect of the social power play of which it is part, but also, at the same time, a clear expression of the ‘reality constituting’ power of language. In the 1970s and early 1980s the concept referred to a common curriculum and equally allocated resources, ensuring that all students would have an educational experience that was both shared and equal. In the late 1980s and 1990s, this meaning of equivalence was challenged by something quite different: a reference to a form of curriculum distribution and resource allocation that put primary emphasis on allowing students and their parents to freely pursue educational choices and on providing an array of curriculum possibilities that varied acc...During the last few decades, the concept of equivalence has assumed an increasingly important role in Swedish educational policy, and at the same time the actual meaning of equivalence has been given different authoritative interpretations. The shift in significance which the concept has undergone seems to be not only an aspect of the social power play of which it is part, but also, at the same time, a clear expression of the ‘reality constituting’ power of language. In the 1970s and early 1980s the concept referred to a common curriculum and equally allocated resources, ensuring that all students would have an educational experience that was both shared and equal. In the late 1980s and 1990s, this meaning of equivalence was challenged by something quite different: a reference to a form of curriculum distribution and resource allocation that put primary emphasis on allowing students and their parents to freely pursue educational choices and on providing an array of curriculum possibilities that varied according to the interests of students and their parents. From the perspective of the challenged meaning of equivalence the question asked is what the markedly weaker emphasis of the former shared frame of reference in favour of increased individual freedom may imply in the light of new conditions for the shaping of community through education.

The public and the text

This is the first in a series of papers by a research group which is seeking to analyse discursive meanings offered and created in institutional socialization processes. Our main interest is in the analysis of the meaning‐bearing content of socialization and the dimensions of citizenship. The paper first presents an outline of the move towards a citizenship sociology of education and curriculum. Second, it describes some of the basic theoretical and methodological starting points of the groups research programme, stressing how the forming of the collective consciousness is bound up with an ongoing ideological struggle. This point of reference, in this and the following papers in the series, is linked to aspects of poststructuralism, neo‐ and critical pragmatism and communitarianism. Each of the papers, like the third part of this paper, exemplifies, in different areas, ways of using the research perspective to perform a discourse analysis, a perspective that stresses possible and potential differences in...

Education as a Citizenship Right--A Concept in Transition: Sweden Related to Other Western Democracies and Political Philosophy.

1 This paper is a revised and extended version of a contribution to a conference arranged by the Swedish National Board of Education (at the time of the conference replaced by The National Agency for Education) and the Swedish Institute for Futures Studies in October 1991. The title of the paper presented was ‘Education as a citizenship right‐a concept in transition’. This article relates to two contributions on Swedish educational policy recently published in JCS, Berg (1992) and Lindblad and Wallin (1993). These two papers describe some aspects of the evolving organizational context of my own article‐the ongoing transformation of the preconditions for Swedish schooling, which I analyse in terms of ‘public good’ and ‘private good’. The use of these terms may of course be further discussed, but my view is that they can be applied to modern Swedish educational history/educational policy to make the differing visions involved clear.

The Potential of Education for Creating Mutual Trust: Schools as sites for deliberation

Is it possible to look at schools as spaces for encounters? Could schools contribute to a deliberative mode of communication in a manner better suited to our own time and to areas where different cultures meet? Inspired primarily by classical (Dewey) and modern (Habermas) pragmatists, I turn to Seyla Benhabib, posing the question whether she supports the proposition that schools can be sites for deliberative communication. I argue that a school that engages in deliberative communication, with its stress on mutual communication between different moral perspectives, gives universalism a procedurally oriented meaning, serving as an arena for encounters that represents a weak public sphere. An interactive universalism of this kind attaches importance to developing an ability and willingness to reason on the basis of the views of others and to change perspectives. In that respect, the institutional arrangements of schools are potential parts of the political dimension of cosmopolitanism, as well as its moral dimension, in terms of the obligations and responsibilities we develop through our institutions and in our actions as human beings towards one another.

Linking curriculum theory and linguistics: the performative use of ‘equivalence’ as an educational policy concept

The linguistic turn has helped to create new methods within social and educational theory. This study draws attention to the constitutive force of political language and the performative dynamics of one essentially contested concept—equivalence—in Swedish educational policy at both the national and the local level. It illustrates the way in which different interpretations of the concept of equivalence produce different truths, the performative concept thereby becoming a way of advocating particular understandings of the purpose of education.

The linguistic turn within curriculum theory

If, as the linguistic turn has taught us, there is no representational knowledge, but more agreements and/or struggles over how to talk and learn about what we call reality, we need to address and analyse the consequences of different vocabularies of educational phenomena and schooling, in order to better understand and make use of both the performativity of language and the force of communicative action for normative rationalisation. Three examples are given. One shows how the concept of equivalence has had an apparent performative function within educational policy, another illustrates the gradual displacement of the concept of professional responsibility in favour of greater use of the concept of accountability, and the third concerns the pragmatisation of the linguistic turn into a communicative and deliberative turn. Proceeding from a dialogue between Rorty and Habermas, an outline of a research programme seeking to analyse the vocabularies and rhetorical force of different communicative practices is sketched.

The General School System as a Universal or a Particular Institution and Its Role in the Formation of Social Capital

In recent decades, the concept of social capital has had an enormous impact on the social scientific debate. Despite its vagueness, the concept expresses a distinction that is of significance for the maintenance and depth of democracy. At the same time, the overarching thesis put forward concerning the fundamental role of associations and social networks in the creation of social capital is not convincing. In this article the role of universal institutions, and primarily of one such institution, the general school system, in creating social capital is emphasized. The discussion gradually homes in on Swedish society and the changes it has undergone in recent decades. The term “universal institution” with reference to the Swedish compulsory school system is examined.