1、外文文献翻译原文 Micro-Power Relations between Teachers and Students using Five Perspectives on Teaching in Higher Education David Gosling Abstract: In recent years, there has been little discussion in the literature about teaching and learning of power relations between teachers and students. Indeed there
2、is a suggestion that teachers have been losing power in recent times both because of so-called student centered approaches but also because students are o be seen as consumers. This paper begins by considering Foucaults comments on power and develops these to explore the micro technologies of power
3、used by teachers in higher education in their roles as subject expert, designer of learning tasks, designer of the curriculum and as assessor. A framework of five perspectives on teaching, introduced by Pratt et al (1998), is used to examine some different ways in which power is exercised within dif
4、ferent teaching and learning regimes. Micro-Power Relations between Teachers and Students using Five Perspectives on Teaching in Higher Education Power relationships within the academy was a fashionable topic in the 1960s and 70s but in the recent literature on learning and teaching power has rarely
5、 been discussed at any length. Power is mainly considered in the context of the disadvantaging of certain groups by virtue of their gender, ethnicity, class, disability or sexual orientation (for example, hook, 1989). The exercise of power within pedagogical relations has not been explored to any la
6、rge extent, and the popularity of student-centered approaches seems to suggest a shift of power in favor of students. In recent years the idea that students should be seen as consumers of higher education has also seem to imply a diminution in the power of lecturers. Morley (2003: 86) quotes a lectu
7、rer who says that you are in a position where you cant refuse the students anything, you know you really cant, if they knock on your door at any time of the day you have to say Please come in, what would you lie me to do for you. The powerlessness expressed by this lecturer hides a more complex real
8、ity in which both students and teachers exercise power in different and complex ways. In this paper I want to explore some of the ways in which teachers exercise power over their students (the power that students have will be the subject of a second paper). After some general remarks about power, I
9、will consider how different perspectives on teaching (Pratt 1998) imply different kinds of power relationships with students. Let us consider some factors that influence the distribution of power between students and teachers. Teacher as expert: The relation between power and knowledge, discussed ex
10、tensively by Foucault, is an important consideration for this discussion because of the way in which different regimes of truth influence the authority of teacher in higher education. Power over students is assigned to the teacher as expert by virtue of his/her claim to superior knowledge. The exten
11、t to which this power is exercised depends on both how teachers regard their claim to knowledge and their conception of teaching, a point to which we shall return shortly. But classification, strong or weak, always carries power relations. Even within contested areas of knowledge which are weakly fr
12、amed, teachers exercise power by virtue of their interpretation of the nature of the subject. Post-modernist English lecturers, for example, may question the nature of traditional literary criticism, but they also expect students to operate within the conceptual framework defined by their understand
13、ing of the subject. Meyer and Land (2003: 421) talking about troublesome knowledge cite Eagleton talking about language as a sprawling limitless web where there is a constant interchange and circulating of elements, where none of the elements is absolutely definable and everything is caught up and t
14、raced through by everything else. Nevertheless, within areas where there is not such clearly identified body of knowledge, it might still be the case that ways of thinking and practice constitutes a crucial threshold function. (2003: 421)When the lecturer, quoted by Meyer and Land, asserts that we h
15、ave to instill in students a kind of acceptance of modeling which is quite fundamental to the way in which we approach most of our analysis phrases like instill indicate a one-way power system. Teacher as the designer of learning tasks: Lectures also have significant power in creating the learning e
16、nvironment in which students find them and in designing the learning tasks with which students are expected to engage. Being a good teacher is very much about being a good designer of tasks and a sensitive facilitator of student engagement with them. That students do not always do what the tutor exp
17、ects shows only that the lectures power is circumscribed and has to be some extent negotiated. But lecturers normally determine the nature of the task-for example, listening to a lecture, observing a demonstration, undertaking a group task, engaging in a seminar discussion-while student power is lim
18、ited to the extent to which they engage with these tasks, though in some circumstances students may exercise collective power to resist the teachers instructions. The manner in which teachers impose their will varies. The most directive, didactic lecturers speak in an authoritative manner which indi
19、cates that they expect to be obeyed. Some may be less assertive but achieve their dominance by being the guru. Here force of personality or charisma, ensures that the students are maintained in a subjugated position. This can be a very powerful form of control that some of the most influential teach
20、ers have possessed. Some exercise their power through teaching as a performance, filling lectures with narratives, anecdotes and jokes. But equally the opposite style-the abdication of structure -is also an exercise of power. Equally powerful are lecturers who present students with a brief, a case s
21、tudy or project and then absent themselves while the stents interpret their intention and try to intuit what will earn marks. Some of these technologies of power as Foucault might call them require face-to-face contact, but so-called e-learning is equally controlling of students. Indeed, it can be a
22、rgued that much computer-moderated learning is more closed and less responsive to students than much traditional tutor moderated learning. The exercise of power in these ways is neither necessarily good nor bad. Indeed such valuable judgments about the power of teachers are almost always contested-though this is not publicly acknowledged in the recent rush towards identifying excellence in teaching. Visiting Research fellow University of PlymouthVol.3, 2002 David Gosling
