ABSTRACT
While I would not go as far as Lawrence in characterizing the importance of power in schooling, this chapter is premised on the view that power matters. Specifically, I am interested in the functioning of power in the pedagogical activities of teachers and students. The pervasiveness of power is not in question here. In literature, in film and television, in newspapers and other popular cultural forms, in the stories people tell, schooling is frequently associated with power. Moreover, educational researchers have addressed power from a wide range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Briefly, I categorize these perspectives as:
• technical-seeking techniques to ensure a ‘correct’ balance between teacher and student power;
• organizational-seeking to understand the functioning of power at the level of the bureaucratic institution;
• ideological-seeking to reveal, through ideology critique, the capitalist, patriarchal, racist practices and effects of schooling and to provide visions of alternative pedagogies aimed at transforming classroom and societal power relations; and
• empowering-seeking to shift the balance of power in educational systems and institutions.
