The professor’s authority, not student essentialism, may set classroom dynamics

Evidence

Initially, my approach in both high school and college classrooms had taken an authoritarian stance where I stood in a place of authority because of my advanced education and content expertise; I am not alone in this style of teacher authority. That is, historically, authority was derived from a person’s particular skill, training, or knowledge (Peters, 1963). Because of this competence or success in particular areas, a person became an authority and was seen as having a “right” to make pronouncements and further take a position of superiority (Peters, 1963). — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 719 (#expands, via linked claim)

As much as it is viewed in terms of ‘a master’ facing ‘students’, the classroom should be seen in terms of a group of researchers in the process of inventing a new way of making sense of a sphere of knowledge – a group in which it is the collective attentional ecosystem, more than the teacher, that is in the positon of agency. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 271 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In much feminist scholarship criticizing critical pedagogy, there is an attack on the notion of the classroom as a space where students are empowered. Yet the classroom should be a space where we’re all in power in different ways. That means we professors should be empowered by our interactions with students. In my books I try to show how much my work is influenced by what students say in the classroom, what they do, what they express to me. Along with them I grow intellectually, developing sharper understandings of how to share knowledge and what to do in my participatory role with students. This is one of the primary differences between education as a practice of freedom and the conservative banking system which encourages professors to believe deep down in the core of their being that they have nothing to learn from their students. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 296 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Students collude in a professor’s self-destruction to protect his authority — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 316; Modern teachers exchange personalized classroom power for bureaucratic rule-bound authority — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 491; Professors are themselves empowered and taught by students — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 296 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Teacher authority historically derived from expertise and entitled pronouncement over students #expands (0.85) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 719
• The collective attentional ecosystem, not the teacher, is the classroom’s agent. #complicates (0.82) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 271
• Professors are themselves empowered and taught by students #complicates (0.80) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 296
• Students’ lived knowledge can exceed textbook content and unsettle teacher authority #qualifies (0.80) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 720
• Modern teachers exchange personalized classroom power for bureaucratic rule-bound authority #expands (0.78) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 491
• Traditional teacher authority dismisses student knowledge and acts oppressively #qualifies (0.76) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 724