This emancipatory action research with teachers attempts to improve learning by communicative action and holistic education with cross-curricular themes. The aim is to emancipate learning from strategic action, which is oriented to success and explotation and which treats pupils as objects. The opposite of strategic action is communicative action, which is oriented toward understanding and treats people as genuine persons. (Habermas 1984, 285-287, Huttunen 2009, 32)

I subscribe to John Dewey`s idea that school is like society in a small scale and people learn by doing. “Relate the school to life, and all studies are necessity correlated” ( Dewey, 1943.) Now our school is too theoretical and separated from real life and society. We need cross-curricular and multidisciplinary thinking. (Vitikka 2009.) According to Kyröläinen (1994) attitude towards school, problem-solving and understanding concepts are better when we practice holistic education at school. Children have four interests: They are “intrested in conversation or communication, in inquiry or finding out things, in making things or construction and in artist expression”(Dewey, 1943, 47). Holistic education takes into account these interests. It is participative education and experimental learning.

In the Finnish curricular we have seven cross-curricular themes: Civilization and growing, Cultural identity and global education, Communication and media, Participated citizenship and entrepreneurship; Environmental protection and responsibility, Welfare and sustainable development, Safety and traffic and, Man and technology. My action research pay more attention to these issues. (POP 2004.)

A very important concept and also an aim in my study is “Bildung”. According to Kansanen (2004) Bildung should be understood as a holistic education of human beings to cultivated citizens. Bildung is a creative, critical and converting process, in which the relationship between oneself and the surrounding world changes (Bauer 2004). The aim is promote teachers` pedagogical thinking and continuing professional development.

In this study, the epistemological point of departure is hermeneutical and critical. Knowledge is constituted in a historical context by experience, expression and understanding. (Dilthey 1974, 101.) The hermeneutic spiral describes this act of understanding. Understanding is never given. We have some pre-understanding, which changes and builds up during the process in a social context. According to Klafki pedagogy is science from practice to practice (Klafki 1976).

This study is mostly qualitative research, which attempts not only to understand and describe teaching and learning (cf. practical knowledge interest by Habermas) but also to change and improve them (cf. emancipatory knowledge interest by Habermas). Teaching or learning is always a local immediate experience. It is a lived experience, in which person and world are co-constitutional.

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