Abstract:
The postmodern world of difference and uncertainty invites people to dream and to "imagine the unimaginable" (O'Farrell, 1999, p. 15) to maximise choices and freedoms, particularly within the otherwise constraining systems of education. Various forms of imagination can be applied to ways of working with disadvantaged high school students as researchers, helping them to reconnect their lifeworlds with the education systems to which they are subject. The SARUA (Student Action Research for University Access) project is presented here as an example of such activity in which a disciplined and critical imagination can help to empower young people. The critical theory of Jurgens Habermas provides a framework for empowering research with young people, such as in the SARUA project, and it too can be strengthened through the "art of imagining" (Grundy, 1996) to increase its relevance to students living in postmodern times.