The article is a discussion of the concept of power in three different social theories that are often
applied to educational research: the theories of Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel
Foucault. In everyday life, the concept of power is used as if it only had a single connotation: power
as possessed by someone (“the powerful”) while exercised over someone else (“the powerless”). In
this case, power is considered as a (potentially) repressive force and ascribed to a person, a culture,
a state, or a society. Though, power can be comprehended otherwise: as non-possessed and
productive. In the paper, the three conceptions of power are presented and discussed in relation to
each other and to specific philosophical themes like dualism, reductionism, determinism and
autonomy, truth, normativity, and relativism. Finally, the paper shows that the applied powerconcept
has significant consequences for the way the educational researcher analyzes conflicts, and
therefore also for our understanding of the world in which we live.