Conceptualizing a Practical Discourse Survey Instrument for Assessing Communicative Agency and Rational Trust in Educational Policymaking

Abstract

How might a theory of communicative rationality be applied to policymaking to secure the morally justifiable administration of public education? In answer, Darron Kelly uses conceptual resources found in Habermasian practical discourse to outline development of a survey instrument. The survey is designed to measure constituent satisfaction with actual conditions of educational policymaking. To do this, the survey operationalizes and quantifies the epistemic conditions of inclusion, participation, truthfulness, and noncoercion. Once captured, analysis of these conditions in actual cases of policymaking further provides for assessment of the degree of communicative agency and rational trust experienced by educational constituents. The instrument, as such, offers a standard gauge of the higher-level intersubjectivity of institutional communication in education — a necessary measure for constructing morally justifiable policies.