In Brookfield’s book The Skillful Teacher he dedicates a chapter to defining what the power dynamic looks like in the classroom, and how we as instructors can start to rationalize with students the decisions we make with this perceived power we have. He also points out that students have power in the classroom as well.

Brookfield (2015) brought up some very interesting points when talking about power. No matter how neutral we believe we are being, we still hold power in the classroom. We hold the power of how we grade, we hold the power of curriculum, we hold the power of what learning tasks will be used. He then flips this on its head and poses ‘What if we let the students self grade? What if we let the students decide the path of the curriculum? What if we let students decide how they learn?’, although the students now have the freedom to do these things, appearing to take the power away from the instructor, we were still the ones that decided to let the students perform these actions proving that we still hold a figure of power and authority in the classroom.

With that out of the way, we know students will always perceive us as having power over the classroom, and we do, but how do we make that power a positive experience for both ourselves and students? Brookfield (2015) has three major avenues for us to keep in check.

• Transparency – Clearly explain the reasons for your actions, be transparent in how you will grade, have detailed rubrics, and make sure these things are understood. “Students won’t always like the way we do these things and they may argue that we have underestimated the value of their work, but they will be far more likely to accept our judgements if we’re up front about what were looking for and if we’re willing to explain why we’ve assigned a specific grade” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 244).

• Responsiveness – Deal with student concerns, issues, and feedback in a timely manor, and if appropriate, publicly with the class.

• Consistently Fair – One thing I keep in the back of my mind is “What’s good for one, is good for all”, and while the sentiment makes sense to me, good and fair are not synonymous, I think better wording may be “Fairness must stretch to all students being given the same equal opportunities”. This fairness is something that needs to be stood by, unwaveringly.

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References

Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The Skillful Teacher (3^rd ed.). Jossey-Bass