Hi John.  I have a paper from my PhD exploring teacher/student power relations in inquiry oriented classrooms.  I analyze my data from direct and indirect techniques of power.  Let me know if you have any questions.  Dermot

Article 'Just Be Quiet and Listen to Exactly What He's Saying': Conc...

Hi John, this is an excellent territory, thanks for bringing it up. I think that there are many different kinds of powers that can be used in the interrelationships between teachers and students/children – not only dominance. There is the power of the charisma of the teacher )and I can think of five different kinds of charisma.) There is the power of conviction, the power of absent, the power of not minding, the power of being able to elevate above conflicts, the power of the mind, the power of the heart. Mostly people will use the power of their brain and indeed will try to dominate other brainpowers. For a teacher to do that in class, as far and I can see it, it is only a very partial answer to the needs that might arise. Of course a teacher can also use the power of the regulations s/he represents, the power of punishment, or the power of insult or reservation of rewards etc. Perhaps the answer lie not in one or the other but at what is needed at any particular situation.

 @Dermot Francis Donnelly . Thank you so much for your wonderful paper. I have read it thoroughly and got very insightful clues for my work. But I think what I am going to do is a little broader than your paper as far as I only read this one. I want to tap into the context or field in Boudieu's sense to see the complex interrelations with "power" which may influence the professional development of in-service teachers, of course, student-teacher relations is one portion of it. Power, in my understanding, serves both constraining and enabling functions (also in Foucault's and Giddens' s senses) on teachers' professional development. Of course, the aforementioned is only my rudimentary deliberation. I am still working on it. By the way, the method I am going to use is narrative inquiry. But I don't know whether it is valid for my research.

@Erez Grinboim. Thank you so much. However, the power in my conceptualization is a little different from what you suggested. Of course, the understanding of power in your sense is very important, but what I want to do is mainly from the perspective of  critical theory and critical pedagogy. I hope I am on the right track. Right now, the most important thing troubling me is the conceptual framework.

Hi John, have you come across Gaventa's work on powercube? (http://www.powercube.net/analyse-power/what-is-the-powercube/)

@Rafael Mitchell . Thank you so much for your wonderful recommendation!

Definitely, the analytical framework in the article is more within the boundaries of teacher-student interactions.  It would be interesting to consider how power manifests itself outside of the classroom too.  However, a key point in my article is that power can be both enabling and constraining, depending on how it is enacted and that is universal to any use of power I believe.  I cannot really speak to the conceptual framework you should use, as I am not sure what research questions you are looking to answer.

French and Raven's (1959) five forms of power was usefull in my research. 1959). The study is "The bases of social power".

Thanks for raising the question. We have a paper in Cultural studies of science education titled, " Examining the mediation of power in a collaborative community: engaging in informal science as authentic practice" that speaks to this topic. I'd be happy to share full-text with you. Please let me know. Thanks.

@Dermot F. Donnelly @Marek Lukáč @Geeta Verma：Thank you all guys! I really appreciate all your insightful suggestions. I will try to digest all this.

Power is a part  of teaching but it mostly looks like authority. You have to influence young minds and one should  never mix it up with dictatorship.

Dear John, I never read or research about Power and teaching. I consider the concept of authority is best placed. So you have a conceptual framework with a variety of authors and lines of thought (sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, etc.). Regarding the authority in postmodernity, I suggest reading Gilles Lipovetsky in his book "The twilight of duty". I copy a link where you will find the online book translated into Spanish. Greetings !!

http://es.slideshare.net/moniramirezh/53292636-gilleslipovetskyelcrepusculodeldeberlaeticaindoloradelosnuevostiemposdemocraticos

 In the view of Nieto power is control. Recent research however suggests that power needs to be more fluid and a conversation between student and teacher. Hence the research around student as consumer etc! Who is to suggest that the teacher is the absolute authority anyway? This is a really good question by the way and made me reflect on my assumptions on power and who wields it.

Focusing solely on authority only illustrates the direct aspects of power and at least, for teacher and student interactions, does not shed light on power that students bring to the classroom as learners, as @Abdul Jabbar alludes to.  To go back to the initial question asked, power can be both enabling and constraining, depending on how it is used. Through effective use of power in classrooms, students can define beneficial classroom norms for learning with their teacher, critically engage in meaningful discussions, and take ownership of ideas covered in class.  However, on the constraining side on power, norms are set for students without their input, ideas are not critically discussed by students, and as a result, students feel little ownership of ideas covered in class.

I don't think power in the classroom should ever be about control of others and domination. Current pedagogy is more about a balance of power among teachers and students, equity in the roles of teaching and learning and a recognition that all participants will bring expertise, different and unique experiences to all teaching and learning situations. Thus, there is scope for teachers and learners to experience the changing roles of both expert and novice and to engage in shared partnerships of learning. Current practice should recognise that each participant has the capacity to control aspects of teaching and learning through the use of multifaceted teaching and learning strategies where explicit instruction is balanced with guided, supported and self-directed learning. In addition, current assessment practices in which assessment criteria forms are made available to students means that teachers are providing explicitly stated expectations for achievements of all grades, providing students with the knowledge and guidelines of what is required but also allowing them to choose (and control to some degree) their level of input and effort to achieve specific grades. Thus the balance of power in assessment is also shared.

Historically, there has been a shift from learners as passive recipients of knowledge and teachers as expert/authoritarian transmitters of information to teacher as facilitator of skill acquisition, guide and supporter of learning with students as active participants in the construction of their learning. Thus, total teacher control and domination over students and student learning no longer has a place in current pedagogical teaching practice.

For further reading about how pedagogical practice has changed through history resulting in shared partnerships for learning see Lonsdale and McCurry, 2004.

I think the power is often a key factor of educational intervention which should be studied first before many other factors. power relationships networks is central to the interpretation of the learning process as a hidden factor. Maybe sometimes taboo or simply ignored because out of the frame of reference.

Power is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands - especially if the one holding the power is unaccountable to anyone. Teachers need to be careful how they use that power. In some cultures this works better than in others. In my culture, the power pendulum has swung so far in the direction of students, that teachers are fearful, are leaving the profession, and in certain subjects schools are having difficulty recruiting new teachers.

Of particular concern is the situation where students have sufficient power to decide whether they want to disrupt the lessons and have a direct confrontation with the teacher. Becasue one of the partners is accountable (and has a career to protect) and the other does not, and is frequently immature.

Having power is a little like being able to drive a car; it is a privillege and a responsibility and a person should need to pass a test that demonstrates their ability to handle it correctly before letting them lose with it!

This source doesn't necessarily answer your question but I find it interesting the way it defines types of power and correlates it to teacher citizenship behavior. It discusses the types of power an administrator uses: legitimate, coercive, expert, referent and reward. Researchers found that only coercive power was a predictor of teachers' organizational citizenship behaviors. 

Kür, Y. A. (n.d.). Relationship between School Administrators’ Organizational Power Sources and Teachers' Organizational Citizenship Behaviors.

Hi, John. You can see some papers about "control and teacher" (Reeve, 2009) or about teachers' motivating styles and their education (Haerens et al. or Aelterman et al.). These papers highlight that teachers are mostly controlling and explain why -Reeve-(in term of power and/or authority) and give some framework that could helf you.

Regards

John

I suggest looking at the 'radical tradition' in education, both for its theoretical problematisation of power and its practice-based responses. Much of that writing is essentially modernist, but it is pretty easy to apply a post-modern reading to it: Foucault is a very obvious source [e.g. Discipline and Punish] as is Judith Butler [e.g. Gender Trouble] for a po-mo critical structure. Since the literature of radical education is less accessible in libraries, I've attached some files here: a definition of radical education; an extract from A S Neill's Summerhill (also check out the Summerhill School website for their current practice); and an extract from Freire. I also suggest you read John Holt, 'How Children Fail' - it is an easy read. You might also like to look at http://www.educationotherwise.net/ - the website for home schoolers - which provides an obvious counter-discourse to that of schools-based education. Hope this is helpful.

Hello

If I will talk about the North African public school Context, there are many factors mingled in a classroom. The patriarch family is  being transferred to classroom. In my generation (primary school in seventies) I remember (13 years after independance of Morocco) that school was holy and the teacher was highly respected but indeed talented and protecting general interest of his pupills. I think in this case, power was justified and a manging tool for the good ongoing of the classroom. Things that have changed today, low competence of teachers, less responsibility, less determination, explosive students where the role of power is no more enough and sometimes even is responsable of loss of controle of the class. We are in an era where psychology and diplomacy is more efficient than power.

Thank you all guys for your invaluable suggestions and interpretations of the topic I put forward. All your understandings virtually enriched my sense of power. What I am going to work, actually, centers more on the implicit and explicit forms of power, the constraining and enabling forces of power, teachers' professional identity and power, etc. Through the case study, I want to tap into the complexity of power relations mediating agency and structure in a localized community of practice (Lave & Wenger) or field (Bourdieu). I also think Bourdieu's "capital" concept can help me conceptualize the various resources which teachers can make use of, either in positive or negative way.

 I will mobilize the notion of social power, knowing that today is a social power and distributed skills.

This constitution power with the collective is a major issue in the training process.

Crozier, M., & Friedberg, E. (1977). The actor and the system.

Luethi, P. (2010). Support the emergence of collaborative business know: What device? Retrieved from http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:12319

If you are interested in power effects on education, specailly in teacher training, probably you'll have profit reading these articles enclosed.

@Óscar Barberá  Thank you so much for your wonderful papers. 

Hello, I, too, have taken up that question. There's a piece on my list of pubs entitled enveloping pedagogies. It's focus is disciplinary power, in a Foucaldian sense. It's a focus on redistributive power. Please let me know if I can clarify. E