The critical theory of Habermas (Cotton, 1998, p38 - 39) offers the following views of knowledge:
'Habermas suggested it is necessary to distinguish three basic forms ofour scientific interest in knowing about the world: the empirical-analytical, the hermeneutic-historical, and the critical-emancipatory. We seek to know in order to control social and natural realities (the empirical-analytic interest), to qualitatively interpret and understand such realities (the hermeneutic-historical interest) and to transform our individual and collective consciousness ofreality in order to maximise the human potential for freedom and equality (the critical-emancipatory interest) '.
The empirical-analytical embodies a technical rationality that underpins positivism that enshrines the empirical-analytical sciences as the only source of both secure and privileged knowledge of the world (Milne and Taylor, 1998). Technical rationality dominated the twentieth century and is part of contemporary economic rationalist goals of efficiency and productivity. In the school curriculum technical rationality makes itself present in the implicit objectivism of the science curriculum.
Habermas's recognition of the central role of subjectivity in creating and validating science knowledge derived by empirical-analytical means allows for a rejection of the objectivist
perspective of the technical view of science according to which science exists as a universe of facts separate from and independent of the knower. Itis the knower's task to describe the science facts as they occur in themselves. The hermeneutic-historical has embedded in it a communicative
rationality that seeks to understand the meaning-perspectives of actors in social situations but fails to critique the natural and self-sufficient cultural frameworks that shape/distort participant's meaning-perspectives. The critical-emancipatory interest involves a critical rationality that arises from a concern with organising social relations on the basis of communication that is free from the distorting influence of ideologically-oriented interests associated with actions arising from an unchecked and invisible technical rationality. This interest promotes the goal of self-critical reflective knowledge within a critical theory of social action that aims to transform society.
Critical theory is always concerned with issues of power and social justice and with the ways that economies, race, class, gender, ideologies, discourses, education, religion, all social institutions and cultural dynamics - that is the very fabric of lives - interact to construct social systems. Critical epistemology includes an understanding of the relationship between power and thought and power and truth claims; of what values and facts are and how these are connected; and includes a theory of symbolic representation (Carspecken, 1996; Kincheloe and McLaren, 2000). Thus, one of critical epistemology's strengths lies in recognising that presence and perception are not to be taken for granted as truth (Carspecken, 1996).
The primary interest for critical theory lies in subjective and intersubjective social knowledge and the co-creation of this knowledge by human subjects through discourse. Itis this that gives validity to the notion that truth claims are never fixed or unchanging; instead truth claims are seen as being created through a community narrative bounded by moral considerations that is grounded in a particular space historically (Lincoln and Guba, 2000).
Human communication is located in one of three categories of truth. These include the truth of only the subject or my world; the truth of all people or the world; and the truth of only those involved in the communication or our world (Carspecken, 1996). This then raises, for human communication, the issue of power as central to any truth/s to be developed since any claim to truth can only be validated by the consent of a group of people around that truth. What critical epistemology is tasked with is to be clear about how power acts to corrupt truth/s and hence knowledge.
Social constructivism is currently a dominant theory within science education which makes a comment about its relation to this study necessary. Some researchers locate social constructivism within the critical perspective. While any discussion on of social constructivism is outside the ambit of this study, the relationship between social constructivism and the critical perspective therefore cannot be ignored. Carspecken (1996) recognises that social constructivism accepts what is already valued as it focuses on what is being influenced. That which is already valued is not questioned or challenged. Itis this act of acceptance of that which is valued that then takes away the critical from this perspective. What social constructivism does then, unwittingly perhaps, is to provide the required political correctness for the enterprise it engages with, ignoring relations of power, oppression and subordination within teaching and learning.
Biology and science education remain located within the empirical-analytical paradigm identified by Habermas. Biology education is still intent on the teaching of facts outside of the knower. Recent research in multicultural, indigenous and feminist science education has moved science education into the hermeneutic-historical domain. This research straddles between the empirical-analytical and the hermeneutic-historical and it is in this way that it continues to influence science education.
This is also true of science education influenced by constructivist and socio-constructivist
understandings. What exists for science education research is understood as also encompassing of biology education research because of biology's location within the domain of science. Current biology education does not raise or encourage any questioning of the objective nature of biology knowledge and it is expected that such valued knowledge is taken as a given. Biology and science education and research in this area committed to emancipation and social justice will require an emphasis on students and teachers becoming critically aware of socio-cultural myths such as objectivism that work together with other social myths that marginalize and delude both students and teachers into accepting a disempowering sense of a lack of agency as learners and knowers of science and as possible agents in the transformation of society (Milne and Taylor, 1998).
Critical pedagogy is linked to the theoretical and practical concerns of critical theory and works to uncover, understand, and transform oppression and domination. Understanding exploitation as embodied in forms of racist and patriarchal social practices should constitute a central focus of critical pedagogy (McLaren and Farahmandpur, 2001). For Fernandez-Balboa (1998) critical pedagogy is 'a way oflife whose central elements revolve around dignity and freedom and has personal, ethico-moral and political implications that require knowing oneself; reclaiming one's own voice, identity and rights; and acknowledging one's social and political responsibilities' (p47).
Crucial to any critical pedagogy then is critical reflection that will enable us to see how our actions are without real meaning in various instances. Critical reflection is effective when it occupies that space between excessive meditation and redundant thought, when it looks both backward and forward as it connects with the real world and also allows for inward-self-questioning in a constant cycle of coming back to a starting point and purpose.
Critical Pedagogy thus is a way of thinking about, negotiating and transforming the relationship between classroom teaching, the production of knowledge, the institutional structures of the school and the social and material relations of the wider community, society and nation state (McLaren and Torres, 1999). To avoid domestication critical pedagogy needs to establish a project of
emancipation centred around the transformation of property relations and the creation of a just system of appropriation and distribution of social wealth. Extra-economic inequalities such as racism and sexism can only be challenged successfully if economic/capitalist dominance is
dismantled. Critical educators need to understand how racisms in their present forms emerged from the dominant mode of global production during the seventeenth and eighteenth century colonial plantations of the New World. Critical pedagogy needs to deepen its reach of cultural theory and political economy and expand its participation in socio-empirical analysis to critically address the formation of intellectuals and institutions within the present productions of history. Critical pedagogy requires a revolutionary movement of educators informed by principled ethics of
compassion and social justice, a socialist ethos and a language of critique. Critical educators need to renew their commitment to the struggle against exploitation on all fronts - given the current
hegemony of a dominant corporate world economy. In emphasizing the class struggle McLaren and Torres (1999) recognise that race and gender antagonisms, amongst others, are located within a theory of agency that acknowledges the importance of cultural politics and social difference.
Critical pedagogy needs to acknowledge the specificity of local struggles around the micropolitics of racialised social relations, ethnicity, class, gender and sexual formation. Critical pedagogy must seek a future that is unstable yet concretely locatable in multiple racial formations because multiple
racisms will make possible concomitant multiple challenges. For McClaren and Torres (1999) , ... A central taskfor critical pedagogy is the construction ofwhat Mohan calls "creative resolutions and contingent alliances'" (p70). Critical pedagogy encourages self-reflection as a practice of everyday life in which a normative democratic theory of knowledge production and conception is a prominent feature. Itneeds to re-embrace macro-concepts such as totality, exploitation and patriarchy without defaming a critical understanding of micro-structures of experiential engagement and micro- intimacies of everyday and communal life. Critical pedagogy must assume a position oftrans- modernity - a co-realization of an incorporative solidarity or an analectic between the
centre/periphery, man/woman, etc. For this to happen the negated, victimized, 'other-face' of modernity must discover itself as innocent.
Critical pedagogy must be made less informative and more performative - a pedagogy grounded in the lived experiences of students. Critical educators need to work towards developing those
intellectual qualities that demand a conviction cast in concrete in a concept of justice and fairness that will allow for differences between nations and individuals without, at the same time, allowing for hidden hierarchies, preferences and evaluations - qualities of critical self-reflexivity for
McLaren and Torres (1999). For Kumashiro (2000) the role of the critical educator is to, together with students, 'critique and transform' (p 2) oppressive social structures and ideologies.
For Nieto (1999) a critical education:
• affirms students without trivializing who they are and where they come from;
• challenges hegemonic knowledge;
• complicates pedagogy;
• problematizes a simplistic focus on self-esteem;
• encourages dangerous discourses; and
• cannot effect change by itself.
In an interview with Rizvi (2002), McLaren states that there is no unitary conception of critical pedagogy. For him there are as many critical pedagogies as there are critical educators with major points of intersection and commonality. Various writings about critical pedagogy abound in the academy including postcolonial pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, critical race theory, critical multiculturalism, anti-oppressive education, postmodern pedagogy, border pedagogy, dialogical pedagogy, revolutionary pedagogy, revolutionary critical pedagogy and of course critical pedagogy itself. An important dimension of critical pedagogy is that which emerges from the nature of the
daily interactions between teachers and students. Critical pedagogy itself evolved from the idea of radical pedagogy and has been influenced also by postmodem theory, post-Marxist theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, literary theory, popular (Latin American) education, liberation (Latin American) theology, political theology and political-liberatory struggles. There is also the need to distinguish between academic critical pedagogy and the critical pedagogy engaged with by the oppressed groups working under oppressive conditions in urban settings and rural areas throughout the world.