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Authority, leadership and followership
Leadership power and authority
Authority, leadership and followership
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1 Introduction
“Everywhere and at all levels social life offers us the daily spectacle of authority fulfilling its primary function – of man leading man on, of the ascendancy of a settled will which summons and orients uncertain wills” (Jouvenel, 1957, p.30). As Plato remarked, authority stems from a man’s ability to direct members of society to the ultimate good (VanderStaay et al., 2009). Authority, in this regard, is thus crucial to achieve the common good in any society, including the academic one (Johnston, 1963; Spring, 1999). Any approval or refusal of particular perspectives of authority, to some extent, determines what takes place in schools (Wilson, 1977). Current educational research has been piloted on exploring authority in teacher-student relationship (VanderStaay et al., 2009; Macleod et
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My personal interest in addressing these issues is developed from a paper I submitted to the course Ethics and Education, titled The Abandonment of Teacher Authority: To Make An Emancipatory Leap …show more content…
A desk-based approach is adopted to synthesise the previous literature of different conceptualisations of teacher authority with literature of teacher-centred, student-centred and emancipatory pedagogies. Regarding the emancipatory approach, Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster and its current interpretations are reviewed to demonstrate the construction of “teacher under authority (of the subject
Meanwhile the text, online discussion, and classroom discussion helped to distinguish the differences between authority, power, and influence. In the educational venue, authority and power both involve having the authorization to compel others to comply with decisions (Gorton & Alston, 2012, p. 74, 88); whereas influence primarily involves being able to persuade or shape decisions and behavior through “informal ...
In “The Teacher Wars”, by Helen Goldstein, the book focuses on the historical implications of school policy and how it affects teachers. The author goes into depth with everything from the rise of female teachers to the rise of technology in today’s teachers. As Goldstein argues teachers have an incredible ability to be able to widen equality, yet can also narrow the achievement gap that is created from birth. Her showcase of the constant strife against teachers throughout the ages gives way to multiple ways politics and decisions affect the achievement gap.
Stanley Milgram shows the reader how big of an impact authority figures have, but fails to answer the bigger question. Which is more important, obedience or morality? Works Cited Milgram, Stanley. A. “The Perils of Obedience.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum.
Many times our first thoughts regarding educational leadership are turned to our first experiences as a child. For most, this individual is the school principal. Teachers and students may have a skewed view of this authority figure. He or she is often the focal point of decision-making and discipline. The principal is the singular driving force that combines teachers with their colleagues and students with their teachers and peers (Goldring, 2...
The question above is challenging because when one looks at the educational system in America - it does not take much to see that standardization of public school curricula, instruction, and assessment are pervasive in our society. The critical theorists may be correct in their assumption that public education has, indeed, succumbed to Freire’s warning about authoritarianism. However, just as Freire championed a need for hope in his writings, so we must look to the qualities he espoused in the role of teachers, the teaching of literacy, and the construction of democratic classrooms and continue to be hopeful that change is possible. Giroux echoed Freire’s ideas "I can't believe in a democracy that doesn't have hope” he said in an interview published on the Penn State website (Brown, 2000).
Everyone should have the right to a good quality education. They should be taught to give their opinion of different ideas and express their feeling instead they are taught to follow the society rule. In the article “The pedagogy of the oppressed”, Paulo Freire talks about the relationship between the student and the teacher and how each of them play a different role in the educational system. The teacher 's role is to educate the students by making them copy what is on the board and memorizing, sometimes without understanding what it means because that’s what they are paid to do. On the other hand, the students have to listen to what the teachers say, copy what they write and memorize it without saying a word or asking any questions because the teachers are the only ones responsible for that. Writer and Activist James Baldwin says that “The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions… To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society.” Education should be fun for the people to learn more and encouraged to do better but it is not. They are forced to learn what society wants them to instead of letting them create new ideas and letting them do what they want to
Authority is power to give orders. In society, people are often led to respect and follow the demands and wishes of people with authority, and not question them. This is what leads to the abuse of authority, the power to change what people think, leading people to believe authority is always correct. However, it is important to question the ideas and decisions of people in positions of authority, as demonstrated by the contrast between Ptolemy and Nicolaus Copernicus on ideas about the movement of planets.
The other day I listened to a friend of mine share experiences of her grade 5 classroom. She lamented how difficult it is to teach today, and gave examples of how much students have changed. One of her friends replied, ‘we would never have said anything like that to one of our teachers!” As I thought about it, I realized she was right; I would have never done the things that some of my students do, but then again things have changed. The education system has change and continues to change. It only makes sense that the role of the teacher needs to change as well. Teachers are no longer seen as all-knowing, nor can teachers run their classrooms as dictatorships, as children at a very young age are taught by their parents and teachers to question and think critically, so they are less likely to accept the status quo and follow along like sheep. As a result, teachers need to begin to rethink the way they run their classes and more importantly rethink how they lead. Instead of putting themselves above their students, some would suggest that teachers need to assume the role of the servant-leader. While many may not see themselves as servants to their students, others would argue that the role of a teacher is inherently one of servitude. This dilemma begs the question, are teachers servant-leaders?
Hooks, Bell. "Chapter 1 Engaged Pedagogy." Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. N. pag. Print.
Students have a valuable voice that should be heard and reflected in educational policy. Cook-Sather calls it the "missing voice in educational research: the student" (2002, p. 5). Before students can move into a more influential position regarding educational policies; teachers, administrators, and researchers all need to adjust the way they listen to students. The relationships that adults have with students; the institutional structures that teachers and students interact in; and the mindsets of teacher...
Authority is the one that has the power over you that is working for them or student in class.
While the teacher role is prescribed by ―organizations like the National Council for the Accreditation of Institutions of Teacher Education (NCATE), media, teachers and administrators, and indeed, teacher education institutions themselves as a way of asserting what makes a good teacher‖ (Guadelli & Ousley, 2009, p. 931), teacher identity is negotiable. The prescribed role of a teacher could be viewed in essentialist terms in that NCATE sets the standards that a teacher is supposed to adhere to and states what competencies a teacher is expected to possess. However, even in adhering to such standards, teachers constantly negotiate their sense of self in different teaching contexts, serving different students. This is the constructivist sense of teacher identity. What teachers do (their role) cannot be analyzed in isolation from who teachers are (their
The first chapter talks about the justification of the pedagogy, the contradiction between the oppressors and oppressed, which each house on another in each other psyche’s, and how the pedagogy is justified. Chapter two is about the “banking” concept of education as means of oppression which treats students as brainless ‘piggy banks’ to be filled with knowledge and teachers as all-knowing beings; “the more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are” (Freire, 1998, p. 53). Chapter two also poses a solution to the “banking” method: problem posing, which through dialogue creates a co-creator relationship between the students and teacher. The third chapter builds more on dialogue as a practice of freedom in education and the final chapter is about dialogics and antidialogics as opposing theories of action.
This book, Dare The School Build a New Social Order by George Counts, is an examination of teachers, the Progressive Education Movement, democracy and his idea on how to reform the American economy. The book is divided into 5 different sections. The first section is all about the Progressive Education Movement. Through this, George Counts points out many downsides and weaknesses of this ideal. He also talks about how he wants teachers to lead society instead of following it. In the second section, he examines 10 widespread fallacies. These fallacies were that man is born free, that children are born free, they live in a separate world of their own, education remains unchanged, education should have no bias, the object of education is to produce professors, school is an all-powerful educational agency, ignorance rather than knowledge is the way of wisdom, and education is made to prepare an individual for social change.
I try imparting into them the importance of an education and how they contribute to the growth of our society. In my classroom, I am in control. I draw a clear line between what and how much my students are allowed to do in the classroom. In the first week of school, I establish my authority and I clearly and explicitly express my classroom and outside the classroom procedures that will be followed and the rights that every student has in the classroom. Some examples, all students have the right to learn, all students have a right to be heard, and all students have a right to be respected. There are consequences for those that chose not to abide. This set the tone for my classroom environment for the entire year so, that learning may take