Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2017

Abstract

Excerpt: "Why should students follow their teacher’s lead? Why should they do what their teacher asks or tells them to do? These questions move us directly into the important and complex question of the teacher’s classroom authority. The importance of understanding teachers’ authority is obvious; classrooms without a leader usually sink into chaos. While almost everyone intuitively grasps the importance of teachers’ authority, many miss its complexity. Even the two questions at the start of this paragraph reveal some of that complexity: Why should students follow their teacher’s lead? Why should they do what their teacher asks or tells them to do? The two questions I began with look similar but the first more clearly asks about what most observers call authority while the second may connect more with what many call power. Even the differences between asks and tells in the second question denote different degrees of power. What do classroom teachers need: authority or power, or both?"

Comments

Originally published as chapter 13 of What Teachers Need to Know Topics in Diversity and Inclusion, edited by Matthew Bruce Etherington, 2017, Wipf and Stock.

Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. www.wipfandstock.com

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