Presented at the Annual Conference of
the Australian Association for Research in Education,
The University of Sydney,
December 5^th, 2000

Stephen Kemmis

I am grateful to the Australian Association for Research in Education for the honour of its invitation to deliver the Radford Lecture. It is a privilege to be asked, and a pleasure to be here among so many friends. It is also a great pleasure to return to the University of Sydney - my alma mater.

As many of you know, I left Deakin University several years ago to work as an independent consultant. It was a struggle for me to leave the university I had loved for 16 years, and I had to stiffen my resolve to go through with it. But I did want to find another way to be. Happily, I have managed to maintain connections with many universities through various projects in the years since. I work in university development in a variety of ways - working with staff in workshops and retreats, conducting reviews of university departments and research centres, and continuing to contribute to educational research and evaluation in a variety of projects conducted with university colleagues.

It is a strange life in some ways. I am an outsider-insider rather than a plain insider to university life nowadays. I do not register as an employee or a salary cost against a department; I am not a usual teacher and supervisor of students, nor am I a producer of research outcomes that count towards some university's Research Performance Index. My salary, work and outcomes are the responsibilities of my own little organization.. I participate in many of the processes of cultural formation in universities, though not as a teacher and researcher in a department or research centre whose function is the transmission and development of a discipline. I work alongside university staff as a consultant or reviewer, but not bound by the day-to-day social integration processes of a single university. And my role - my identity - has been nurtured by processes of the academic socialization and identity formation in educational research and evaluation that still have me on a certain trajectory; nowadays, however, I am now being socialized to other ways of working and being - in business, with my family and in my local community. In short, I now walk alongside the institution of the university, haunting the cloisters and corridors as an occasional visitor and consultant.

But I am also a partner to various universities. Not necessarily one of those wealthy partners so sought after as you build university-industry links, but nevertheless a partner in various projects and enterprises with universities and university colleagues.

My visits to universities are tinged with a little nostalgia, of course, but also with empathetic concern about some of the difficulties of university life these days. Like many of you, I worry about the workloads, the "efficiencies", the more muscular forms of management and accountability, the drive for productivity gains, about some aspects of the commercialization of university teaching and research - in short, about the nature and future of intellectual production in universities, about the extent and effects of marketization, and about the nature and effects of the new forms of managerialism and bureaucratization of the work, the workers and the workplace in the university. On the other hand, I think there is evidence of some improvements in some aspects of university life and work, though the change to a new form of higher education sector in Australia, and to new modes of university work, have brought losses as well as gains.

Alongside the changes to the Australian higher education system, and each university as a system, I see changes in the lifeworlds of universities - and some pathologies.

First, the processes of cultural production, reproduction and transformation in universities continue through teaching and research, with proper attention to the needs of learners, the needs of the wider society, and the needs of the disciplines and professions. At the same time, the "products", whether graduates or contributions to knowledge, are more closely counted, weighed and measured; and the production process is now more closely managed and accounted for. Intellectual production processes in the university are increasingly monetarized and bureaucratized (though university bureaucracy is also taking new forms), and the university faces a new wave of dangers from subjecting itself to the demands of money and power. It has withstood challenges from these honourable old enemies over nine centuries or so, however, so we should not write any obituaries yet.

Second, the lifeworld processes of social integration also continue, for students and for staff. People join the university as members; as members, they are still in one of the most rational of institutions with surprising resources of self-regulation, despite government and consumerist demands. Universities are still among the best of employers, though of course they are not perfect. Universities still operate according to more rational and democratic principles than most institutions, and still give more sustained attention to the demands of truth and justice in the ordering of their affairs than do most other organizations, despite the more robust exercise (and sometimes the abuse) of executive power throughout the organization. In short, much of what happens in university life still has values and legitimacy honoured within and beyond the institution. One must concede, of course, that there are sometimes legitimate grounds for complaint when members of the institution cannot participate in many decisions they are expected to regard as authentically binding on them as persons. The old self-regulation of the community of scholars was founded on that kind of consent; increasingly, the legitimacy of decisions is secured through more indirect and external means: the employer's legitimate requirements of employees, which require no participatory basis for consent within the institution, but secure such legitimacy as they have through the indirect medium of industrial and other law.

And, finally, the lifeworld processes of socialization and identity formation continue in the university, extending the capabilities of students and staff through participation in teaching and research. Universities still reach out to and include students, partners in enterprises and agencies, communities. They still extend people's capacities; they still prepare graduates for lives that will be more rational, more informed by moral values and professional ethics, more rewarding, and more satisfying than they might have been had they not been in the university. Of course there are also doubts about the efficacy and effectiveness of old forms of teaching and learning in an increasingly massified higher education system, about the depth of learning under massified conditions of teaching, about standards of scholarship among students and teachers and researchers. Nevertheless, the socialization processes of the academy continue to have force and effect for those who experience them. And the disciplines and professions, communities, the economy, and cultural and political life have continued to benefit and advance as graduates and university staff have become more sharply aware of how their scholarship can contribute to the life of the wider society

So: I do not see the contemporary university as fatally wounded or flawed - though it is under pressure, there are dangers, and there are signs of various kinds of pathologies. On the contrary, I think there are signs that things are gradually improving. I would say that the worst days of crisis were in the year that followed the May 1996 Commonwealth budget announcement - the Vanstone cuts to higher education. The following two years or so were not much better: around the sector, morale was still very poor. But, as universities began to invent, borrow and explore new ways to deal with their budget-induced difficulties, they also found new ways to connect with their various "clients" and publics. These new ways of working are still far from perfected; they are not sufficiently widespread; workloads are still unreasonably high; staff and students have borne too many of the costs of change in the sector. Progress has been uneven between departments and centres within universities, between universities, and between metropolitan centres and the regions.

Education Faculties, Schools and Departments have had their share in all of this. Many have had a worse time of it than other parts of their universities. But, despite the problems, new ways of working have emerged in teaching and research. The endlessly renewable resources of human sociality - the lifeworld processes of cultural reproduction and transformation, social integration and socialization - have continued to enrich and enliven the field and profession of education. And educational research continues to contribute to the cultural resources of the discipline and the profession of education, the social relationships and social structures of our field, and the resources and capabilities of the people who constitute it.

My remarks so far have focussed on the university as an institution, in terms of its system features and in terms of the lifeworld processes that sustain universities. I have been drawing on the resources of Habermas's (1984, 1987a) two-level social theory, the theory of lifeworld and system, as an organizer for my comments. The theory has been generative for me in my work - indeed, it is an explicit resource in some of the work I do in universities, especially working with groups aiming to recover a sense of the value and worth of their work in university environments degraded by system pressures.

Some of you will be aware of the work I did with colleagues at Deakin and elsewhere in the development of action research in education. In those days, we drew extensively on Habermas's (1972, 1974) critique of social science in his theory of knowledge-constitutive interests - the interests that lie behind and guide approaches to research, giving it purpose and a way of connecting with the world around it. The theory of knowledge-constitutive interests showed how empirical-analytic research (as in various forms of positivist and structure-functionalist research) was guided by a technical interest in control of social processes and outcomes. By contrast, hermeneutic research (including various forms of what we now call qualitative research) was guided by a practical interest in educating people to see their social world more wisely and humanely, and helping them to act more prudently. Beyond these two kinds of research and their associated knowledge-constitutive interests, Habermas wanted to advance the cause of critical theory and critical social science guided by an emancipatory interest - an interest in emancipating people from the constraints of irrational, unjust, unsatisfying and unproductive forms of life imposed by structures of social domination.

In that phase of our work, we made a critique of educational research in general, trying to show the power and limitations of educational research guided by technical and practical interests, and the potential of a critical social and educational science guided by an emancipatory interest. The argument was elaborated in Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research, a book Wilf Carr and I co-authored in the early '80s (Carr and Kemmis, 1986). Around the same time, in the 'Research on Action Research' project, our Deakin group explored the potential of educational action research as a form of research which might address some of the limitations we perceived in much 'conventional' educational research of that time. On the basis of what we discovered about the various forms action research took around the world, we also turned the searchlight of Habermas's critique onto action research itself, distinguishing technical, practical and critical (or emancipatory) forms of action research.

We did make our argument for emancipatory action research as a form of critical social science, however. This led us to make a systematic study of the power and limitations of emancipatory action research in a variety of projects - in schools, universities and various settings of Aboriginal education, for example. In the next few years, we had discovered that action research understood merely as a research method had no particular power to emancipate people from irrationality, injustice or dissatisfaction - indeed, when interpreted just as a series of steps in a spiral of self-reflection, it could be or become part of the structures of irrationality, injustice and dissatisfaction in a setting. To be emancipatory, it had to be undertaken with shared critical intent, and it had to be alert to the dangers of self-deception: the possibility that participants would replace one set of structures of domination with another.

In the middle '80s, our theoretical work began to face new challenges - especially from the various post-structuralist and postmodernist perspectives then challenging the modernism of critical theory. We were instinctively drawn to the new forms of attack on the positioning of the researcher in the power-relations of the research setting, and welcomed the critiques that showed how research - like education - was deformed by the dynamics of power structured around culture and gender, for example. On the other hand, we were far from ready to nail the lid on the coffin of critical social science or emancipation. To use the subtitle of a book by Brian Fay, we were well aware of "liberation and its limits". But, like Seyla Benhabib (1992) I was unable to accept that every form of modernist social theory was beyond help. Like other social theory, some forms of critical theory had been flawed by patriarchy, by illusions of a grand historical narrative of progress, and narrow views of rationality, but these flaws were not beyond remedy.

I was pleased to encounter fresh contributions by Habermas to the development of critical theory in his debate with post-structuralism and postmodernism - eloquently argued in his (1987b) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. I will not try to recount its arguments here. In the book - originally designed as twelve lectures - he aimed to recover from the modernity-postmodernity debate some of the core aspirations of philosophical modernity. He recovers communication - or, more precisely, communicative action - as the core concept. (I will have more to say about this shortly.) But one of the key features of his argument is his critique of the philosophy of the subject. He argues that truth resides not in the mind of individual cognitive subjects (though both objectivism and subjectivism had presupposed that it did) but in the eternal conversation of people who interrupt what they are doing to ask "Is it comprehensible?" "Is it true (in the sense of accurate)?" "Is it morally right (appropriate)?" "Is it truthfully (ie, sincerely) stated?" That is, communicative action erupts whenever people stop their goal-oriented action to question whether it is right and proper to be doing what they were doing under current circumstances and in the light of consequences that will echo through the unfolding history and society of a group, a community, a nation or the world.

The more substantive achievements of Habermas's social theory emerged in The Theory of Communicative Action, Volumes 1 and 2 (1984, 1987a) where he outlined a two-level social theory in which communicative action took a central place.

According to this theory social life - for example, the social life of education - always has two faces or levels: lifeworld and system. The system side is that part of social life guided by functional rationality (or instrumental, means-ends reasoning). It is the side of social life we have in mind when we refer to goals and outcomes; and when we think about technical and social functions and functioning needed to achieve those goals and outcomes. It is the side of social life associated with social organization - frequently, these days, discussed in terms of mission, vision, strategy, policies. It is the side of social life in which there is a differentiation of tasks and roles so that a technical division of labour corresponds roughly with an associated social division of labour; and in which there is frequently an elaborated definition of roles in terms of duties and responsibilities and (in formal organizational settings) relationships of reporting and supervision. Most - some say all - of social life can be described in system terms, with every organization being understood as composed of subsystems interacting with other subsystems internal and external to any group or organization, and in which even the person is understood as a system interacting with other systems.

The other side of social life is the lifeworld side. This is the side of social life we have in mind when we think about face-to-face and other interpersonal relations between people. It is the side of social life which gives content and character to culture, society and personal identity. But, in Habermas's view, culture, society and identity are not to be regarded as fixed in language, small or large social groups, or the individual biological human beings. They are held together through processes of communication. Indeed, lifeworlds are networks of communication, and they operate through communicative rationality (to be distinguished from the functional rationality of systems). These communicative networks are networks of communicative action - action that strives towards mutual understanding, intersubjective agreement and unforced consensus about what to do in any given practical situation. Through these networks, cultures, societies and personal identities are ceaselessly produced, reproduced and transformed through three key processes. First, there is the process of cultural reproduction and transformation, by which knowledge and culture are passed on and developed. Second, there is the process of social integration, by which social relationships and solidarities are secured and gain their legitimacy. And third, there is the process of socialization and identity formation, by which individual capacities for social interaction, production and expression are secured and developed. These three processes are the endlessly renewable natural resources of human sociality: they are at work as we connect up with one another in the realms of meaning or semantic space (culture), social space (society), and historical time (identity). They are especially evident when we come to a new group or situation, or when we interrupt a taken-for-granted situation to ask "what's going on here?". But they are always present as the processes by which we daily constitute and re-constitute lifeworlds by our living in them as social beings.

These two aspects of social reality - lifeworld and system - coexist and interpenetrate. Every real social setting has features of both - not just one or the other. System is not to be found just at work, or in organizations, for example, any more than lifeworld is to be found just at home with the family or in the neighbourhood with friends. They are not geographical concepts. They are different facets of social life that continually interact, in fluid and complex ways. A workplace has system features - goals, outcomes, roles and the like - but it also 'contains' many lifeworlds - it is made possible and reproduces itself through processes of cultural reproduction and transformation, social integration and socialization (identity formation). Lifeworld processes may be more evident around the coffee urn or in the corridor, but they are also present at the desk, on the computer or the telephone, in the exchange between supervisor and supervisee, and in the staff in-service training program.

In The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas develops theoretical resources with the aim of addressing some of the key problems of late modern societies, characterized by advanced differentiation, and crises of culture and meaning, legitimacy and social solidarity, and personal identity and capability. Taking up threads of argument from the theory of knowledge-constitutive interests, he shows that some contemporary forms of theory and research are unequal to this task. On the one hand, system theories help to advance understanding of the world in functional terms, but they fail to address key issues about the nature, worth, substance and significance of matters to do with culture, society and identity. On the other hand, "sciences of social action" aim to elucidate these matters, but frequently cast individuals and groups as the "victims" of systemic processes, which they experience as if they were "forces of nature". To grasp both sides of social reality, Habermas argues, we need a two-level or two-sided social theory that offers to address the problems of late modernity in terms of the tensions and interconnections between lifeworld and system, privileging neither. The theory of communicative action is such a two-sided theory. It aims to explain some of the key problems of late modernity in terms of "boundary-crises" arising as a consequence of tensions between system and lifeworld.

He advances two key theses about late modernity. First, he argues, the system side of life in late modernity has become very highly differentiated, multiplying problems of steering interacting systems and subsystems. At the same time, however, economic and political systems have become "relatively autonomous" of their anchoring in the lifeworld side of existence. They have become "uncoupled" from the lifeworld. Economic and political systems each operate according to their own imperatives, through the steering media of money and administrative power. Each pursues its own goals, heedless, as it were, of the lifeworld processes necessary to sustain meaning, legitimacy and individual satisfactions. This is the thesis of the uncoupling of systems from the lifeworld.

It is easy to find everyday examples of where we experience this uncoupling. Whenever we feel ourselves to be pressured into following particular kinds of work practices, in which our own cultural, social and personal wants and needs seem to be entirely excluded, we experience the dominance of system imperatives. When we find ourselves participating in formal political processes and the formal processes of implementing policies that feel like "external" forces with which we must comply, we experience the dominance of system imperatives. When we feel that our work life, or the political life of our society, no longer speaks to us in authentically-meaningful terms, or no longer sustains social solidarities and legitimacy, or no longer offers us the possibility of genuine satisfaction that our reasonable needs and aspirations will be met, we experience the dominance of system imperatives.

Habermas's second thesis is the thesis of the colonization of the lifeworld by system imperatives. According to this thesis, the lifeworld contexts of everyday life in late modernity have become increasingly colonized by system demands. In the dimension of semantic space, the language in which we understand ourselves, our work lives and our socio-political circumstances is increasingly the language of systems - the language of goals and roles, of functions, of production and organization. In the dimension of social space, we increasingly understand ourselves as members of organizations expected to perform in relation to formal organizational goals and norms. In the dimension of historical time, our notions of personal identity and capability are increasingly caught up in the language of careers and formal duties and responsibilities, so we see ourselves increasingly in the roles of client (in the socio-political sphere) and consumer (in the economic sphere), and in terms of the provision of services to clients and consumers. We experience ourselves as caught up in abstract, generalized, and globalized system processes, and there seems to be little alternative to adapting ourselves to them. Despite the fact of our endlessly being involved in the lifeworld processes of cultural reproduction and transformation, social integration and individuation-socialization at the local level, the conditions of late modernity - and the colonization of lifeworlds by systems imperatives - push us towards under-valuing what is local, interpersonal, value-laden, moral, or authentically-expressive.

These two theses - the thesis of uncoupling of systems from their anchoring in lifeworlds, and the thesis of colonization of lifeworlds by system imperatives - seem highly relevant to understanding education and educational research and evaluation today. In the university departments of education I visit, I see dozens of people - staff and students - who seem to be living out the experience of the uncoupling of systems from their anchoring in lifeworlds, and the colonization of lifeworlds by system imperatives. These two these apply not only at the level of the university department of education, but also at the level of whole universities; and at the wider systems level of government agencies responsible for education, higher education and vocational, technical and community education.

At every level, teachers and students, service providers and their clients and consumers, experience the power of the great steering media of money and administrative power. They experience their work becoming monetarized - that is, as being regulated in terms of money as the steering medium of economic systems. Many speak of their work as becoming "commercialized". Similarly, they experience their work becoming juridified (brought under the control of law) and bureaucratized - that is, being regulated by administrative power as the steering medium of socio-political systems.

The work of contemporary educational research also seems to give evidence that these two theses are at work. Regarded as a system or industry, educational research has become more systematized in terms of funding, modes of production, and the distribution of findings. To some extent - though not as much as in education itself - educational research is becoming uncoupled from the lifeworlds of researchers and the lifeworlds of those who participate in education. And it is becoming colonized by systems imperatives. To some extent, the substance of educational research is becoming more closely attuned to the needs of the economic and socio-political systems; and, even more clearly, the process of educational research is more closely governed by system imperatives (for example, in relation to the allocation of funding, the management of research, and the measurement and reward of research performance).

It would be a mistake, however, to think that in drawing attention to these features of educational research in universities today I am describing a problem caused by systems for the lifeworlds of educational research. Instead, I am suggesting that some general theses about the forms of interconnection between systems and lifeworlds seem to apply in educational research as well as in other work in education. Such "problems" as there may be in the situation of educational research in Australia today would be problems to be found on both the system side of educational research and on the lifeworld side.

On the system side, there may be a variety of problems of productivity in educational research today - associated with funding, the work itself, or the utility of its products for education (for teachers, students, educational administrators, curriculum developers, teacher educators, employers or communities). A variety of problems might arise regarding the integration of educational research and evaluation to the operation, governance and administration of education systems. For example, there might be problems in relation to the role educational research can or should play in schooling at every level, the development of pedagogy and curricula, the development of the education profession, and the development and improvement of educational policy and administration.

On the lifeworld side, there may be problems in relation to the culture of education and educational theory research; or in relation to the social relationships between educational research and researchers and the many others involved in the processes of education; or in relation to the formation and transformation of the identity and capacity of researchers and those they aim to inform and educate.

What the theory of lifeworld and system suggests is that we can expect problems of both kinds, and that solving problems on either side does not necessarily solve problems on the other. Resolving problems of system steering, for example, does not necessarily assist in dealing with problems of meaning, values and legitimacy, or identity and capability in educational research or education. Resolving problems in the lifeworld processes of cultural reproduction and transformation, social integration and individuation-socialization does not necessarily help with problems of steering education systems. There are separate currencies for dealing with the two kinds of problems, and gains in one cannot be bought or paid for in the currency of the other.

Despite their operating in different realms or sides of social reality, it is nevertheless true that problems and processes on either side are interconnected with problems and processes on the other. Problems on the system side may exacerbate problems on the lifeworld side, or vice versa. Equally, failing to address problems on either side might exacerbate problems on the other.

It can readily be argued that, in educational research, system problems are causing or exacerbating problems on the lifeworld side. For example, problems of funding university education departments and getting resources to flow into educational research are creating problems in the conduct and quality of educational research, and the training of researchers, not to mention the utility of research for the wider problems of education as experienced by the profession, students, and a variety of other stakeholders in education. Resources are needed to sustain the lifeworld processes of cultural reproduction, social integration and individuation-socialization necessary to the maintenance of educational research worthy of the name. People must have time to think and debate, to build solidarities and legitimacy in their relations within and beyond the social settings of their research, and to develop their identities and capabilities as researchers. When university systems are not funded sufficiently to allow time and space for communicative action among researchers, and between researchers and the fields they serve, they threaten the conditions necessary to fulfil their missions, and to achieve their goals, and to meet reasonable expectations of their outcomes.

On the other hand, failing to address lifeworld-side problems in educational research also exacerbates problems in the operation and steering of education systems. For example, it seems to me that if educational research and evaluation are not strongly connected to education in schooling, educational policy and administration, and the formation and transformation of the profession, serious problems arise for what we might call the culture and society of the field of education, and the capabilities and identities of educators. Educational theory and research need to be closely connected to the culture of education as a field, a discipline and a profession. Educational research and researchers need to be a legitimate part of the social networks of the wider education profession, and to have a legitimate place in the formation and development of education in the eyes of the great variety of stakeholders in education. Educational researchers need to have the kinds of identities and capabilities that the education profession and other stakeholders in education regard as useful and productive for their lives and work. If educational researchers are not well connected in these ways, then the conduct and intended consequences of the operation of education systems are put at risk.

In much of what I have had to say so far, I have dwelt upon educational researchers in universities. Many here today are educational researchers in universities. But the conduct and consequences - and the practice - of educational research extends beyond you and your institutions. There are many other educational researchers whose concerns and activities are as crucial to education as yours. I make no special plea for independent consultants like me, or for educational researchers in a variety of government agencies and other bodies - like education unions or professional associations. I do want to make a special case, however, for those educational researchers who see themselves first and foremost as teachers - who are practitioner-researchers.

It is clear that many university education departments, including notably, the Faculty of Education of the University of Sydney, which has established a Centre for Practitioner Research, are doing their best to make connections with practitioner-researchers. Many universities have extensive programs of research in collaboration with teachers - Victoria University in Melbourne's west is another notable example of a university with a highly elaborated set of connections to teacher-researchers in its region. These are important and significant developments, helping to strengthen the ties between theory and practice, investigation and transformation, and universities and their communities and their various kinds of clients.

But there are many teacher-researchers (and student-researchers, and school-community-researchers) who operate outside these formal partnerships and networks affiliated with universities. Though also including universities, the Australian National Schools Network (ANSN) has fostered teacher research on a substantial scale. It has established "research circles" of teachers investigating a variety of issues in contemporary schooling - like middle schools, the use of information and communications technologies, and the problems and prospects of "full service schooling". In most cases, these ANSN research circles have "academic associates" from universities who support the teacher-researchers in their work, but not always from universities. (I am the academic associate for a Victorian research circle investigating Full Service Schooling, and recently helped run an ANSN workshop for a group of people interested in forming an Indigenous education research circle in Queensland.) Beyond the networks of the ANSN, there is also the work of hundreds of teacher-researchers working together in association with a range of other professional bodies and networks. And beyond them, there are still more teacher-researchers working alone or in groups and networks "investigating their reality in order to transform it", as Orlando Fals Borda (1979) put it - though I would also add, "transforming their reality in order to investigate it".

My point is this: in the last two decades, educational research has escaped the confines of the university and from the research branches of the old state education departments. Universities, in particular, have assisted in this emancipation. They have trained researchers, they have developed research methods and approaches more suited to the vagaries and conditions of practitioner research, and they have provided generous support to teacher-partners in the research enterprise. These efforts have been made because many university educational researchers have become convinced of the argument that research has a crucial role in improving the living relationship between educational theory and practice. Many have been convinced that their own research in and from the academy must connect with, and become more useful in addressing, the problems and concerns faced by teachers and educational administrators and educational policy-makers and school communities. Many have become convinced that many of the "old" practices of educational research were partly responsible for creating a perceived "gap" between theory and practice, and between the work and concerns of universities and schools. And so they have transformed their ways of doing educational research to become more inclusive, more engaging and more enabling of teachers, students, educational administrators and school communities.

One might argue that, over the last twenty years, we have witnessed a shift from research for the disciplines associated with education (psychology, sociology, etc.) to research for the practices and profession of education. Of course, relevant disciplines remain important, but there is a sharper awareness in Australian educational research that it must speak to practice and practitioners, and that some of its unity is to be found in through attention to the practice side of the theory-practice relationship. As earlier educational theorists of the 1950s and 1960s found, too great an attention to 'foundational' disciplines had a fragmenting effect - they saw practice from their own particular disciplinary perspectives, and struggled to make common sense of the practical problems and issues confronting teachers and others concerned with the work of education.

One of the most important initiatives aiming to support research "in the field" (though far from the only one) was the "Innovative Links Program" - part of the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (as it then was) National Professional Development Program. About twenty-two universities facilitated research by "round tables" of teacher-researchers in clusters of nearby schools. Shirley Grundy, then of Murdoch University, and Rod Moore, from the education unions and the National Schools Network, jointly coordinated the program. The Innovative Links Program developed out of the work of a consortium of universities willing to work with round tables of schools and teachers.

Today, many of the practitioner-research networks established in those days still survive - even without funding. They are a powerful resource for educational research. They produce new knowledge for the profession and the field of education. They continue to produce improved practice in curriculum, pedagogy and school organization.

In tough times like the present, however, it is hard to give these networks the support they deserve. It is hard to sustain the communications that permit the sharing and exchange of knowledge, experience and research findings beyond these groups. The ANSN tries to support the exchange, but has few resources for a task that has become very large indeed. Many universities try to sustain it through their work of partnership building and maintenance. Professional associations try to support the effort where they can.

One might suggest that the Australian Association for Research in Education could also have a role in supporting these networks. The Association has changed significantly over the years in its support of educational research by teacher-researchers. Perhaps there are ways it could go further, to assist in finding funding, training and support for practitioner research, and in finding ways to support the dissemination of findings and reports from and to practitioner research networks.

I propose increasing the integration between university educational research and practitioner research not only because the Association should be a good "corporate citizen" in relation to practitioner research, but also because I believe it is essential to the well-being of educational research itself.

On the system side, there is a pressing need for inclusive, engaging and enabling research that understands the problems faced by education systems, from central offices down to the classroom and community. Not just the productivity of education but the quality of the products of education are at stake, and education systems need assistance from both university researchers and practitioner researchers if they are to make possible significant improvements in education. It is not just that we need better outcomes of education in economic and socio-political terms; we also need better educational processes - processes that are more effective in educating people (which means something more than better teaching and better learning). In these late modern and postmodern times, we need - more than ever - better-educated people.

On the lifeworld side, there is a pressing need for education that is more effective in cultural production, reproduction and transformation, developing the cultural resources appropriate for changed times. The Queensland "New Basics" project, formerly led by Allan Luke, is an example of a project striving to understand the new forms of literacies relevant for the new millenium. We also need to counter the fragmentation and loss of meaning experienced by many of our young people today - what can schools do to help them feel engaged as participants in the culture, not as bystanders?

We need education that is more effective in social integration, developing new forms of solidarity and legitimacy for a changed world. We need education that develops a sense of belonging, of justice, of solidarity, of legitimacy appropriate to a globalized world and vastly extended social relationships. We need to counter the alienation and legitimation-deficits that are the accidental but systematic by-products of current forms of schooling.

We need education that is more effective in individuation-socialization, developing healthy personalities, a vigorous sense of identity, a valuing of difference, and robust capabilities in young people. We need to counter the sense of anomie that besets a sizeable minority of young people, and a sense that they are not - each and every one - valued because they are valuable and thus essential to the well-being of their communities and Australian society.

We have gone through a period in which educational researchers have all too often felt excluded from the improvement of education systems - or have felt that systems have "kept" or hired "tame" researchers, evaluators and consultants to work on developing system operations and steering. At an Australian Curriculum Studies Association meeting years ago, Dahle Suggett remarked that educational practice was no longer guided by educational theory but by educational policy. I would say now that it is not conspicuously guided by theory or by policy, but by expected outcomes, often far too narrowly defined. In the view of many commentators, there has been a deprofessionalization of teaching, a deskilling of teachers. On occasion, various educational researchers and evaluators have been called to assist in the restructuring and reform projects of education systems that have produced these side effects.

While this process has been going on, other compensating forces have been at work - "under our noses", as it were. Teachers and schools have been doing their own research. Universities have been engaging with them, learning from and with them. Educational theory has been developing as a social movement almost "outside" and in opposition to the social order that governs and administers education. As we know, all social movements are, first and foremost, educational movements. In particular, they are movements aimed firstly at the self-education of those involved about the world problems they experience; secondly, at the education of others who also experience these problems though without necessarily having an articulate view of their nature or consequences; and thirdly, at the re-education of those they see as causing the problems. They aim at nothing less than changing the world.

I put it to you that the practitioner-research movement is an educational movement of this kind. It is a movement for the self-education of teachers and school communities who want to raise and answer the questions they regard as most pressing in their own situations. They aim for forms of research and action that are inclusive, engaging and enabling for those involved in and affected by the work of education - locally and in association with interested others elsewhere. They want forms of research that can make a difference in the real social relationships of their schools and communities, that can strengthen individuals' knowledge and collective cultures, and can develop the capabilities and identities of all of the people involved.

If the practitioner-research movement is such a social movement, it would be wise for the Australian Association for Research in Education to know where it stands in relation to this movement. It should consider how it might feed and support it. Because it seems to me that its reputation and legitimacy are at stake if it stands aside from the movement. If it connects with the movement, on the other hand, then it may provide and receive support in the prosecution of the things it holds most dear: the development of education through research.

It seems to me a reasonable aspiration for the Association that it should aim to develop a communicatively-enabled education profession with which to work. That means assisting the profession in finding and exploiting space for communicative action in and about education. It means building partnerships with the profession not just through universities, but also through other bodies and forums. It means finding more direct and mutually-respectful ways to connect with practitioner-researchers through a variety of kinds of relationships. Some might be through participation in meetings like this one; others might be through publishing or supporting lively journals or magazines of genuine interest to teachers.

In Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Democracy (a study of law as the key mechanism for regulation of human affairs in contemporary states) Habermas matched the critique of the philosophy of the subject with a critique of the social macrosubject. Among his conclusions is that much political theory is mired in a confusion about the rights and responsibilities of individuals versus whole societies (states, jurisdictions) regulating themselves under the rule of law. He finds a similar problem to the one identified in his critique of the philosophy of the subject. Where the philosophy of the subject aims to read off 'Truth' in the mind of an individual cognitive subject, much political philosophy aims to read off 'Justice' in the constitution and self-regulation of a state. But the state is not the same as society. Civil society continually extends beyond and eludes regulation by the state; indeed, it exists as a category recognized in at least some political philosophy as a social realm which is a realm of freedom standing in opposition to the sphere of state regulation and control. Habermas's point is that the state exists in a kind of tension with public spheres of communication and discussion that can give or withhold legitimacy: it can secure authentic commitment and decisions regarded as binding upon citizens, or it can operate through processes (eg, negotiation among elites and key power groups) in ways that exclude citizens, so they no longer regard decisions as binding upon them. This is summarized in the Discourse Principle: "Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses" (p.107). In the end, one might say, the legitimacy of law - or policy - depends upon the possibility of communicative action.

Take the proposed Commonwealth policy on school funding now before Parliament. Its effect is likely to be the diversion of funds from public education to independent schools. Is it a legitimate policy? It is apparently passing through the proper processes on its way to becoming law, and if it is accepted by a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate could be expected to be authorized by the Governor-General and proclaimed as law. But the proper process - the fact of its being made law - does not guarantee its legitimacy. It remains to be seen whether the majority of citizens will regard it as a benefit or a loss. Its legitimacy depends on the authentic assent of the people. But it is not just their immediate assent, based on the degree to which the policy serves their own interests, that counts in establishing its legitimacy. Establishing legitimacy is not just a matter of procedural interest-based bargaining. To have legitimacy, the proposed policy will also have to establish its moral and ethical credentials. Habermas distinguishes "the moral principle" and "the democratic principle":

Habermas sketches the relationships between the different kinds of discourses involved in the following diagram:

The legitimacy of the proposed law on school funding (like any other law) depends ultimately on whether those involved and affected really do believe that their interests really have been fairly taken into account (as they would be through fair procedurally-regulated bargaining); that the decisive reasons are, in the end, acceptable to everyone in our political community who shares "our" traditions and strong evaluations about the issues involved (ethical-political discourse); and that the decisive reasons given for making the law are, in the end, acceptable to each and everyone (moral discourse).

Educational research and evaluation can investigate and illuminate such questions, and contribute to the public discourse in which relevant questions are framed and answered. It can show, for example, what interests are served, in the long and short term by the new funding arrangements for schools. It can throw light on relevant traditions - for example, traditions of education, public education and private education). And it can examine the cogency of arguments advanced on one side or another - for example, in terms of the long and short term consequences for different groups in terms of respect for the interests of people of different classes, genders, or cultures within Australian society.

In raising and investigating such questions, educational research and evaluation demonstrate that they can serve the political system. Moreover, they can do so critically - that is, by testing the legitimacy of laws and the operation and effects of the administrative system that implements the law. It can do so by opening spaces for communicative action in the form of critical appraisal and re-appraisal of the way different interests are served in the operation of a law or particular administrative arrangements (like the school funding procedures proposed under the new law). It can open and contribute to questions of morality associated with law and administration (for example, questions about unequal treatment, or unequal regard for people from different groups). And it can raise associated ethical-political questions about a law and its administration (like questions of due process, and questions of how the arrangements relate to strongly-held values and significant traditions of our society).

There is not space here to make a parallel set of arguments about the critical roles educational research and evaluation play in relation to the economic system. Clearly, much educational research and evaluation already does, and will continue to, contribute to general understandings about how education helps in the development of workers, work and whole systems of production. For example, a great deal of work is currently under way exploring the role of the new information and communications technologies in education, and for a world whose economic activity will be increasingly shaped by these technologies.

A critical form of educational research and evaluation will not only examine questions of the relationship between education and the economy as if the demands of the economic system were to be taken for granted, however; it will also raise issues about the tensions and interconnections between economic systems and the lifeworld - for example, questions about the compatibility or incompatibility of demands of economic steering through the power of money with the lifeworld requirements for sustaining cultural reproduction and transformation, social integration and the development of the capabilities and identities of individuals able to participate fully in the life of the society in which they live. As in the case of the political system, an analysis of the tensions and interconnections between economic systems and lifeworlds will similarly press us towards considering the role of communicative action in securing culture, society and forms of identity that are enabling for individuals.

Educational research and evaluation can investigate and contribute to lifeworld processes and communication in various public spheres. Of course it also has roles to play with respect to the economic and political systems - not least, forming individuals with capacities that will allow them to earn a living (in the economic system) and to play active roles as citizens (in the political system). But educational research and evaluation have a particular roles to play in exploring and extending space for communicative action. Communicative action is at the heart of education - at the heart of the educational process itself. Communicative action is essential in the dialogue between students and teachers. One might even say that education consists in learning and practicing the arts of communicative action - the arts of reaching mutual understanding and intersubjective agreement, and reaching unforced consensus about what to do in relation to any given practical problem, in any given situation. Communicative action is similarly essential in the formation of a school curriculum, the formation of wise educational policies and processes of educational administration, and in the formation of teachers through initial and continuing teacher education. Each of these practical tasks requires more than setting and attaining ends and outcomes; it requires wise and prudent judgement which must be tested in deliberation and debate that can only be successful when it excludes coercion - when the only force that counts is the force of better argument. And the force of better argument can hold sway only when all participants in the deliberation strive together towards mutual understanding and intersubjective agreement, and unforced consensus about what to do in order to educate any particular group of learners about any particular matters in any particular setting and society.

So: educational research and evaluation can justifiably serve technical and practical aims, but in the end their own justification depends (like education itself) upon the real possibility that any participant in the research process (whether researcher or researched) has the right to interrupt and open communicative action about what is going on. Moreover, in addition to this reflexiveness (turning the spotlight of justification upon itself), educational research and evaluation have the capacity and the responsibility to turn the spotlight of justification on a range of other objects, including at least educational processes in schools and other settings, curricula, educational policies and administrative procedures, and the formation of teachers.

In light of the foregoing, is it justified for educational researchers and evaluators to simply intervene in the social processes of schools and agencies, either individually or through professional bodies and the institutions to which they belong? Is it justifiable for them to use the time and resources of their employers or sponsors to make contributions to public debates about educational matters? Aren't there dangers that educational researchers and evaluators will pursue their own self-interests under the guise of the public interest when they make such interventions? These are complex and difficult questions which I cannot fully answer here. Here, I will say only that it seems to me to be among their responsibilities to make a contribution to wider public debates about education - even though, in the end, it might be a responsibility they exercise as citizens with expert knowledge, not just as experts. And, of course, one would also hope that those researchers and evaluators who are employed in universities would also intervene in public debates about education and related matters as part of the public interest responsibility of the university to the society it is constituted to serve.

In Chapter 8 of Between Facts and Norms, Habermas explicates the notion of the public sphere in some detail. Here is my summary of some of the key features of a public sphere as Habermas describes it in Between Facts and Norms:

• Public spheres are (self-) constituted as relatively autonomous - that is, they are outside (often marginal or peripheral to) formal systems (eg, the formal systems of the state) and systems of influence that mediate between civil society and the state.
• Public spheres are constituted for communicative action and for public discourse. Public discourse includes not only face-to-face participation by people together at the same time and place but also asynchronous participation by people who are unknown or anonymous to one another but who nevertheless join an extended 'conversation' about a topic or theme. Public discourse has a similar orientation to communicative action: it aims towards mutual understanding, intersubjective agreement and unforced consensus about what to do.
• Public spheres aim to be inclusive; to the extent that a network of communications is exclusive, doubt arises about whether it is a "public" sphere. Public spheres may include not only the most obviously interested and affected parties, but also people and groups peripheral or marginal to (or routinely excluded from) discussion in relation to the topics around which they form.
• Public spheres tend to involve communication in ordinary language which aims to be inclusive. They thus aim to break down the hierarchies which ordinarily separate specialist versus non-specialist discourses, people who are in "high" versus "low" positions in organizations (eg, state organizations, business enterprises, institutions), "insiders" and "outsiders", and disinterested people versus those with specific self-interests in relation to the topics under discussion.
• Public spheres presuppose communicative freedom: the freedom of participants to adopt various positions in discussion (speaker, listener, observer) and to withdraw from discussion. (Participation is voluntary, as are decisions to adopt the positions of speaker, listener, observer.)
• Public spheres create the possibility that communication networks in a society will generate communicative power - that is, that the positions and viewpoints developed through discussion will command respect and have legitimacy.
• Public spheres frequently come into existence in response to legitimation-deficits - that is, in areas where problems, concerns or issues arise because the legitimacy of laws, policies, plans and perspectives is in (or put in) doubt.
• Public spheres do not affect social systems (eg, of government and administration) directly, through the exercise of influence; their impact on systems is generally mediated through systems of influence (eg, through associations in civil society, or through key groups in institutions and organizations).
• In practice, public spheres frequently arise through (or in relation to) communication networks associated with social movements.
• There is not just one public sphere, except in abstract terms; in reality there are many public spheres, constituted as networks of communication.

In Habermas's critique of the societal macrosubject, public discourse and communication replace the concretized, totalized notions self and society (individual and organization, citizen and state, worker and enterprise). We may want to think in a similar way about educational theory without a totalized notion of the society or state served by education, without a totalized notion of the university (or the department) or the school, and without a totalized notion of the social groups to which people belong - including the groups in a university, a department, a school, or a classroom. Democracy consists not only in ideas of free and equal participation in the formal (and often deformed) political processes of constitutional democracies, but also in the exercise of basic rights - like freedom of assembly, of association, of speech - and the freedom to engage in communicative action in public spheres of the kind I have outlined.

Educational research and evaluation should be feeding - not aiming to own or keep - public spheres. Educational research and evaluation have many roles, including system roles of informing enterprises (in the formal economic system) and governments and government agencies (in the formal political system) about the nature, potential and consequences of different kinds of educational processes. But they also have roles which extend beyond systems into the lifeworld processes of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization (identity formation) via the public spheres that make culture, society and identity possible. Educational research and evaluation can and should be serving roles not unlike the roles that can be served by rational mass media. Such mass media are different from the mass media we have, of course: our current mass media operate primarily as arms of the information and entertainment industries (that is, as enterprises within the economic system), and as influence-brokers (in relation to the political system). In addition to their functional roles in support of the economic and political systems, educational research and evaluation can and should work in ways that will inform, educate and enrich the society they serve - through enriching the public spheres on which democratic life depends.

In saying this, I have in mind the kinds of role for the mass media envisaged by Gurevitch and Blumler (1990), approvingly cited by Habermas in Between Facts and Norms:

Habermas concludes:

These insights may suggest some ways in which educational researchers in the Australian Association for Research in Education could connect with practitioner-researchers as a social movement, and some of the critical roles educational research could perform within a social movement for education. On the one side, we may behave like the independent journalist-observers of a rational mass media, as envisaged by Gurevitch and Blumler. At the same time, however, we might want to be engaged participants in the struggles of the movement - adopting a role as scribes and contributors in the ways Alain Touraine (1981) suggested in describing the "method of intervention" he adopted in studying social movements by being involved in them.

But we might also consider how we can use our skills, expertise, methods and capabilities in particular to help open up communicative space in various kinds of public spheres. We already do so in many ways, not only through our formal work in our organizations, but also in various kinds of roles as engaged citizens, contributing to public debate in various local and wider forums. I think it is time to think in a wider way about this kind of work. It seems to me that we should no longer regard it as a kind of "extra-curricular" activity, but as essential to our work. Of course, some such work is blessed by many universities in the names of "applied science", "university-industry links", "partnerships" and the rest. But it is not only of importance in terms of the system side of our work. It is crucial, I suggest, to the lifeworld side of our work. It is what nurtures and sustains our capacity to develop and transform our cultures, societies, and capabilities and identities through education and through educational research. It allows us to bring abstract, general, globalized understandings to bear on and through the concrete, particular and local practices of education and educational research. It offers a way to make a difference, and to feel that one has done so with colleagues and collaborators with whom one stands for education and for a better world.

We have many of the skills and capabilities required, but some will say we lack the resources. I am not so sure. I think we may need to reconsider how we allocate our resources. Currently, we are highly sensitive to system demands about how resources can be used and to what ends. I think if we reallocate the resources already available to make a better balance with sustaining the lifeworld side of our work, we will very likely improve outcomes from a systems viewpoint - though some of the outcomes may be substantively different. Our projects might be different, but we can still produce publications and other assessable research performance indicators. Our industry links might be different - with teachers' organizations rather than system sponsors, for example - but we can still show that our work is contributing to the development of our disciplines, professional practice, and educational policy and administration.

I urge you to consider how the Association might make common cause with educational researchers outside the universities, and how it might contribute to a social movement for education. Perhaps the most important way to do this is to work alongside them, helping to investigate and transform their realities - the realities of schools and schooling. In addition, we can help them build links with one another, across schools, communities and systems, helping to build the social movement for educational change.

I urge you to consider how we might contribute to the public spheres from which communicative power is generated - the kind of power that changes the world by changing minds, and by changing the way we live in the world. It is an educational task, but it is directed not at individual cognitive subjects, or at an individual social macrosubject like the Australian state. It is a task of participating educatively in the fluid communication networks of public spheres, participating judiciously in the interests of truth and justice understood in communicative terms. It is a task of self-education more than the education of others. And it cannot be done - or at least not easily or well done - without you.