Session Information
Contribution
This abstract focuses on classroom power relationships and examines how these are created during the communication process between the teacher and the pupils. We define power as the ability to influence actions of a person or a whole group of other people (McCroskey et al., 2006). This definition encompasses actions whose goal could be both to change someone else’s behaviour or to strengthen it and keep it on the same level. In this sense, power is the essence of teaching because according to Richmond and Roach (1992) being a teacher always involves using of interpersonal power and the quintessence of teaching lies in influencing of students.
It is not possible to define power as an ability or attribute of an individual. Goffman (1971) pointed out that power is an interpersonal thing: one is powerful and authoritative only when those around them perceive them so. Hence, power is at all times negotiated and it has to be maintained. The goal of this paper is to examine classroom communication with this perspective in mind and to show that apart from the level of meaning, which ensures the transmission of the currently taught subject matter, classroom communication also includes the level of relationships at whose heart lies establishing and affirming of power relationships (see Watzlavick, 1967).
Drawing on data gathered from a field research of ethnographic character, we have identified several mechanisms which teachers use in order to gain the upper hand over pupils so that the pupils give in to teachers’ commands. Some of these mechanisms are related to the teacher’s personality who, knowingly or not, has a dose of charisma at their disposal. These mechanisms are expressions of the individual power of the teacher. However, there are also mechanisms which draw their power from the fact that the teacher is a representative of the institution of school which grants them certain powers and privileges. While the mechanisms of individual power are either devised by teachers themselves (or adopted upon someone’s advice) who experiment with them, the institution of school transforms its impersonal power by bestowing it upon the teachers who exert it and who are thus given the mechanisms of social power. It is the social power which generates discipline in the Foucaultian sense: it pre-defines activities that the pupils are allowed to do, and it also predefines when and how these activities should take place (Foucalt, 1997).
Although classroom communication is asymmetric, even pupils have a certain amount of power at their disposal: they might resist the teacher’s commands or they can assert their own agenda and requirements. The goal of the paper is to illustrate how teachers and pupils put each other into certain positions according to how they define and create their mutual relationships.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Alexander, R. 2001. Culture and Pedagogy. Interational Comparisons in Primary Education. London: Blackwell. Bernstein, B. 1975. Class, Codes and Control III: Towards a theory of educational transmission. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison. London : Allen Lane. Goffman, E. 1971. The presentation of self in everyday life. London : Penguin. McCroskey, J. C., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, L. L. 2006. An Introduction to Communication in the Classroom: The Role of Communication in Teaching and Training. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Richmond, V.P., Roach, D.K. Power in the Classroom: Seminal Studies. 1992. In Richmond, V.P., McCroskey, J.C. (eds.). Power in the Classroom. Communication, Control, and Concern. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 47-66. Sinclair, J. M., Coulthard, R. M. 1975. Towards an Analysis of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spradley, J.P. 1980. Participant Observation.Wadsworth: Thomson Learning. Šeďová, K., Švaříček, R. 2010. Evaluation or Non-evaluation? The Role of Teacher Evaluation in Educational Communication. Paper presented at the Oxford Ethnography Conference, 2010, 30 p. Watzlawick, P., Bavelas, J. B., Jackson, D. D. 1967. Pragmatics of Human Communication; a Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. New York: Norton. Woods, P. 1986. Inside Schools: Ethnography in Educational Research. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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