ABSTRACT
Ontologically, the study is inspired by the way Jürgen Habermas (1995) views society from both a life-world and a system perspective. From a lifeworld perspective, educational processes are directed towards individuals’ understanding and meaning-making through communicative action while the system directs the same processes towards goals and successes for the overall society through strategic action. A communicative action is a cooperative action, between individuals oriented towards mutual understandings which enable dialogue in a subject-subject relationship. Strategic action, on the other hand, aims at gaining the goals of one party-which makes the other the object of the action-rather than creating a dialogue based on intersubjectivity. Therefore strategic action leads to an objectifi cation of fellow beings since people are used instrumentally to protect personal interests. In this study, these concepts have been used when analyzing the communication of values.
