RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

CRITICISMS OF APPROACHES FROM CRITICAL THEORY 29
Stage 3: an agenda for altering the situation – in
order for moves to an egalitarian society to be
furthered.
Stage 4: an evaluation of the achievement of
the situation in practice.
In the world of education Habermas’s stages are
paralleled by Smyth (1989) who, too, denotes a
four-stage process:
description (what am I doing)
information (what does it mean)
confrontation (how did I come to be like this)
reconstruction (how might I do things
differently)
It can be seen that ideology critique here has both
a reflective, theoretical and a practical side to it;
without reflection it is hollow and without practice
it is empty.
As ideology is not mere theory but impacts
directly on practice (Eagleton 1991) there is
a strongly practical methodology implied by
critical theory, which articulates with action
research (Callawaert 1999). Action research
(discussed in Chapter 14), as its name suggests,
is about research that impacts on, and focuses on,
practice. In its espousal of practitioner research,
for example teachers in schools, participant
observers and curriculum developers, action
research recognizes the significance of contexts
for practice – locational, ideological, historical,
managerial, social. Furthermore it accords power to
those who are operating in those contexts, for they
are both the engines of research and of practice. In
that sense the claim is made that action research
is strongly empowering and emancipatory in that
it gives practitioners a ‘voice’ (Carr and Kemmis
1986; Grundy 1987), participation in decisionmaking,
and control over their environment and
professional lives. Whether the strength of the
claims for empowerment are as strong as their
proponents would hold is another matter, for
action research might be relatively powerless in
the face of mandated changes in education. Here
action research might be more concerned with
the intervening in existing practice to ensure
that mandated change is addressed efficiently and
effectively.
Morrison (1995a) suggests that critical theory,
because it has a practical intent to transform and
empower, can – and should – be examined and
perhaps tested empirically. For example, critical
theory claims to be empowering; that is a testable
proposition. Indeed, in a departure from some of his
earlier writing, in some of his later work Habermas
(1990) acknowledges this; he argues for the need
to find ‘counter examples’ (p. 6), to ‘critical
testing’ (p. 7) and empirical verification (p. 117).
He acknowledges that his views have only
‘hypothetical status’ (p. 32) that need to be
checked against specific cases (p. 9). One could
suggest, for instance, that the effectiveness of his
critical theory can be examined by charting the
extent to which equality, freedom, democracy,
emancipation, empowerment have been realized
by dint of his theory; the extent to which
transformative practices have been addressed or
occurred as a result of his theory; the extent to
which subscribers to his theory have been able to
assert their agency; the extent to which his theories
have broken down the barriers of instrumental
rationality. The operationalization and testing (or
empirical investigation) of his theories clearly is
a major undertaking, and one which Habermas
has not done. In this respect critical theory, a
theory that strives to improve practical living,
runs the risk of becoming merely contemplative
(see http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/
9780415368780 – Chapter 1, file 1.7. ppt).
Criticisms of approaches from critical
theory
There are several criticisms that have been voiced
against critical approaches. Morrison (1995a)
suggests that there is an artificial separation
between Habermas’s three interests – they are
drawn far more sharply (Hesse 1982; Bernstein
1983: 33). For example, one has to bring
hermeneutic knowledge to bear on positivist
science and vice versa in order to make
meaning of each other and in order to judge
Chapter 1