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Contemporary philosophical and political theories place high hopes on the concept of deliberative democracy. Within educational research, there seems to be widespread agreement that if students are to be educated for deliberative democracy, actual classroom deliberation constitutes an indispensable educational tool. From the standpoint of sociology and social psychology, this assumption seems plausible but unnecessarily vague. In this essay, Wendelin Reich suggests a comprehensive list of educational aims that may be associated with deliberation before reviewing research on the concept of communicative interaction in order to evaluate how deliberation, seen as a specific form of communicative interaction, could live up to its educational aims. From this evaluation Reich deduces that the aims stand in complex and sometimes even contradictory relation to the means for achieving them and to each other. Reich concludes that more empirical research is needed to determine in which forms and contexts deliberation can best contribute to fulfilling the goal of educating democratic citizens.

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