Philosophical reflections on the liberating or alienating potential of the knowledge transmitted within the educational activity are not new, as we find them through the entire history of philosophy of education: from the criticism addressed by Socrates to the sophists regarding a more demagogic than emancipatory type of education (Platon, 1992) to the different theories of critical pedagogy that deconstruct the idea of ​​an epistemologically and sociologically neutral knowledge (Kincheloe, 2008a), the question of the very nature of knowledge transmission and its impact on the learner has always accompanied philosophical thought in education. Sometimes conceived as emancipatory, as it allows the new generations to recognize the past and the traditions in order to renew them without completely destroying them (Arendt, 2012), sometimes perceived as alienating considering its anchoring in an overly positivist conception of science or an exclusively white culture (Feyerabend, 1988), the knowledge transmitted in the education institution, whether seen as liberating or as a vector of domination, is nevertheless inexorably linked to the question of the authority of the teacher as a hermeneut who, paradoxically, holds the power to exploit and renew alienation as well as to allow students to recognize and resist alienation. It is from this perspective that this paper proposes a reflection on how the alienating or emancipatory impact of knowledge on the learner depends intimately on the hermeneutic relationship between the teacher him/herself and the knowledge he/she’s transmitting, an argument that we present first by 1) illustrating the question using the debate between Gadamer and Habermas regarding the nature of hermeneutics and its links to the educational activity, and 2) discussing a critical approach of team teaching (Colwill & Boyd, 2008) likely to shape, for the teachers and the students, a form of conscientization and resistance regarding the potential alienating nature of the knowledge transmitted within the educational activity.

This paper is largely based on a theoretical and philosophical analysis of the relevant Gadamer and Habermas' texts, and of the critical literature concerning the use of team teaching in the classroom.

With this paper, we hope to shed light on the critical and emancipatory potential of team teaching for the teachers, but also for the students.

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