The generation of knowledge

While Dewey looks at reflection as a thinking process by which an individual comes to a greater understanding of a particular experience, Habermas approaches the notion of reflection from a slightly different angle. He was concerned with the generation of knowledge from experience. Groups and individuals who are disenfranchised by the dominant social and political order can, by reflecting on and examining their experiences of this social order, begin to generate ideas and propositions that are outside the accepted canon of knowledge.

Placing reflection as a means of developing not just an individual's understanding but creating a body of knowledge to challenge accepted ideas is, for Habermas, transformative and liberatory.

There are many contemporary examples of the ways in which groups in western society have, by exploring their experiences collectively, been able to develop new understandings that challenge the existing power relations. The consciousness raising groups (CR groups) that were characteristic of the Women's Movement in the early 1970s are the classic example of reflection on experience being used to generate radical ideas that challenged the status quo. Women worked collectively to explore and analyse what it meant to be a woman in a society where men occupied the dominant public roles while women were expected to concentrate on domestic and familial matters. It is from such reflections that ideas such as patriarchy took on new meanings of inequality and oppression. Similar processes are evident in the development of ideas by Gay Liberation or by Afro-Americans in their struggles for civil rights during this same period.

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In the academic sphere as well, Habermas sought to establish the validity of reflection which could act as a challenge to the dominance of positivism. Habermas stresses the importance of this critical dimension which has been taken on in education, for example, by Carr and Kemmis (1986), in their influential book Becoming Critical: education, knowledge and action research. We need to examine some of the key aspects of the theoretical ideas put forward by Habermas.