ABSTRACT
To make proper sense of what it is to be reasonable, we found we had to consider rich contextualized settings in which real thinking and feeling people interact and communicate. Our best purchase on this is not obtained by considering adults, who have already become somewhat reasonable and autonomous, but by looking at young children developing reasonableness and autonomy. For teachers, the obvious focus of attention is the activity taking place within the classroom, particularly dialogue which genuinely involves students as well as the teacher. Habermas’s theory of communicative action, with its dialogical emphasis, shows promise for providing a theoretical basis for the analysis of classroom dialogue.
