Learning to Teach Involves Learning to Negotiate Power Relations
Learning to teach involves learning to negotiate power relations; that is, in Foucault’s sense, it requires engaging with power differentials that exist because of varying levels of knowledge within the society. In this regard, an ethnographic approach to the seminar allowed for a possibility of understanding and analysing the exercise of power in the process of learning. Foucault states, power and knowledge directly imply one another; there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations. These ‘power-knowledge’ relations are to be analyzed, therefore, not on the basis of a subject of knowledge who is or is not free in relation to the power system, but, on the contrary, the subject who knows, the objects to be known, and the modalities of knowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental implications of power-knowledge and their historical transformations. (1977, p. 6)
Such a conceptualization of power implies that knowledge is one form of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986) that can be utilized as a tool for control. Following Foucault’s notion of ‘power knowledge’ and of subjects that know, the power of symbolic capital, which includes knowing ‘others’, lies in the way dominant members of a community mobilize and utilize it to control others (Vivian & Sudweeks, 2003). An ethnographic approach to the seminar, therefore, allowed for a systematic review of relations of power at various levels of the teacher candidates’ learning, including at the placement level where, by definition as candidates, they were automatically positioned as not knowing, despite evidence that many of them possessed school teaching experiences from their countries of origin.
Ethnography also allows for ‘member checking’ (Cuba & Lincoln, 1981) and for unexpected learning incidents, such as that which is the subject of this paper (Is ‘good’ really good), to occur. Bradley (1992) describes principles underlying the critical incident technique as encompassing: factual accounts of real events in which the purpose and consequences of behaviour are clear, i.e. critical incidents; the interview focused on the specific reasons for actions and behaviours; incidents categorized using inductive judgments (usually of a panel of people) rather than using any pre-existing theoretical model, (p. 99) We combined Guba and Lincoln’s (1981) and Bradley’s (1992) research approaches with theories of ethnography of communication to understand some of the processes of interaction that took place in the seminar.Most important of all, we stand by our Replica Louis Vuitton. We want you as a customer. Why not enjoy a beautiful Louis Vuitton bags N41533 speedy 30 handbag/large tote ? Expect compliments. You will be surprised at what it will do for your confidence.
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