Students’ lived knowledge can exceed textbook content and unsettle teacher authority

Evidence

The power dynamic was set up in such a way to ensure an acceptable and comfortable level of distance. … The students questioned and challenged my “superior” content knowledge and offered examples from their own lives that contradicted the lessons I was teaching, and in many ways displayed a depth and breadth of knowledge of race, class, and justice that I honestly had no justifiable reason to reject as “inferior” to what I was attempting to teach. The tensions heightened when they wanted to be heard, all the while when I attempted to “get back on track” to the prescribed curriculum. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 720

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Shared teacher authority keeps power but redirects it toward democratic student partnership — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 744; Traditional teacher authority dismisses student knowledge and acts oppressively — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 724; Teaching is continual reinterpretation rather than transmission of fixed content — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 267 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Traditional teacher authority dismisses student knowledge and acts oppressively #corroborates (0.85) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 724
• Professors are themselves empowered and taught by students #corroborates (0.85) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 296
• Engaged pedagogy grants students authority over their own meaning-making #expands (0.82)
• Teaching is continual reinterpretation rather than transmission of fixed content #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 267
• Generating classroom excitement requires abandoning fixed agendas and fixed authority #expands (0.78) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 24