Foucault, Habermas and Evaluation

Educational evaluation may be understood in terms of what Michel Foucault describes as ‘discursive practice’, yet this perspective may lead to a kind of despair if evaluation technologies are seen as no more than an expression of ‘the will to power’. The issue of evaluation technologies as ‘machines’ is not new to the evaluation literature, as the author's autobiographical reflections on his evaluation training and experience suggest. The Foucauldian view is counterposed here with the Habermasian notion of a ‘science of social action’, and explorations of the potential of Habermas's ideas in educational evaluation by the author and his colleagues. It is argued that Habermas's theory of communicative action offers humane, convivial and rational resources for the further development of the theory and practice of educational evaluation.