Authority and Democracy
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008The authority relations in schools between teachers and students matter for what students learn and how they become citizens in society. Judith L. Pace did a job talk at Berkeley today discussing authority as a lens for understanding schools and their role in a democracy. She started out the talk justifying her focus on authority by saying that “learning is voluntary, it cannot be coerced”. This is a simple but powerful way of looking at the importance of studying and understanding authority relations in schools. She used sociological (organization) theory, as well as much historical and theoretical work in education.
What are the authority relations between students and teachers? What drives teachers’ approaches to and uses of authority? How might this look different for immigrant students/in immigrant communities? What about when teachers come from different countries? Different socioeconomic backgrounds from students (very common in U.S. schools).
Here’s an interesting op-ed she wrote about the need to focus on social studies in elementary schools.