Ideologically bound communication

Habermas is concerned that we move away from communication that is ideologically dominated and/or bound. We must remember the other dimension of Habermas' discussion, that of emancipatory knowledge and the concept of empowerment.

Undoubtedly, as professionals involved in education, we encounter multiple official discourses that frame ideologies. These discourses and ideologies in turn can affect not just how we work, but also how we construct our professional ideas and concepts and to some degree, our professional identities.

An example of this is the use of official language and we need to be aware of its effects on our practice and thought:

In teacher education we mythologise certain expressions, points of references which become socially constructed phenomenologies which serve as anchorages for given communities (e.g. 'levels of attainment', 'failing schools', 'reflective practice'). Official languages become an imposed form of anchorage which taints the space people see themselves working in. Developmental practitioner research is thus always conditioned by the discourses, which surround it (658).

A key idea in the work of Habermas is that of emancipatory knowledge and as practitioners there are a number of questions that we can ask:

• is emancipatory knowledge a useful concept?
• is emancipatory knowledge possible?
• can we as practitioner create new ideas or are our ideas bounded by the political and professional contexts in which we work?