5. Empowerment in schools

mind that leads students to passively accepting the status quo of their existence in the world. As opposed to depositing information in students' minds, posing problems to students that encourages them to critically reflect on societal and power structures and how they influence students' life's "can develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation" ([16], p. 83). However, it is within the interests of teachers to embrace the banking model of education because in its fulfillment, teachers retain their power [16]. Relinquishing their power by providing students with a space to critically reflect and question such influential structures may risk or threaten teachers' status and power. However, Freire encourages teachers not to exercise their power over students, but rather they should use it with students their journey of learning. The process of relinquishing power, as such, giving power to individuals is characteristic of an endeavor to empower [17]. Therefore, towards the generation of empowering learning environments, it is necessary for teachers to identify the power dynamics that establishes in their classrooms while enacting on such dynamics to

Similar to the multi-faceted nature of the concept of power, empowerment is also a nebulous concept that carries with it many different interpretations and definitions. Rappaport considers empowerment as "a belief in the power of people to be both the masters of their own fate and involved in the life of their several communities" ([18], p. 142). Unlike this perception of empowerment as a belief [19], considers empowerment as a process seeking to nurture efficacy; "enhancing feelings of self-efficacy among organizational members through the identification of conditions that foster powerlessness and through their removal by both formal organizational practices and informal techniques of providing efficacy information" (p. 474). Zimmerman also considers empowerment as a process that is characterized by the affordance of opportunities for people to control their own destiny and to influence the decisions that affect their lives [20]. Similarly, Lightfoot perceives the opportunistic facet of empowerment involving the affordance of opportunities people have for autonomy, responsibility, choice and authority [21]. According to Kieffer, not only should empowerment involve acquiring new practical skills, it should also involve individuals being afforded opportunities to reconstruct and deeply engrained personal systems of

Within an educational context, Ashcroft objects to words typically associated with definitions of empowerment such as "motivating", "supporting", "freeing" and "enabling" [8]. According to Ashcroft, "motivating" is solely the act of a teacher and as such, neglects the powers within the students themselves. "Supporting" infers weakness, inadequacy or impoverishment in students. "Freeing" suggests a directionless and laissez-faire teaching role while "enabling" does not tend to exude the potency and the positive impetus to action better which is characteristic to empowerment. In critically evaluating the concept of empowerment in education and its associated definitions, Ashcroft [8] purports that to empower is to "nurture belief in capability and competence" (p. 145) whereby capability refers to one's ability/capacity to act and competence refers to sufficient/appropriate/effective action. Therefore, according to Ashcroft, an

relinquish some of their power to empower students.

26 Contemporary Pedagogies in Teacher Education and Development

4. Empowerment

social relations [22].

Just as power exists and functions in different ways in schools, both inside and outside the classroom, empowerment can also exist and function in different ways both inside and outside the classroom. However, much empowerment-based research that has taken place in an educational context has focused on the empowerment of teachers. With respect to teacher empowerment, it is conceptualized by Short, to manifest in six dimensions that includes; (i) decision making, (ii) teacher impact, (iii) teacher status, (iv) autonomy, (v) professional growth and (vi) teacher self-efficacy [23]. The decision making dimension of teacher empowerment relates to teachers' participation in making critical decisions that directly affects their work such as budgets, teacher selection, scheduling and curricula. The teacher impact dimension of teacher empowerment refers to teachers' perceptions that they have an influence on aspects of school life. Teachers' perceptions that their colleagues respect and admire them professionally are characteristic to the teacher status dimension of teacher empowerment. Teachers' beliefs that they can control aspects of school life such as scheduling, materials and instructional planning is characteristic to the autonomy dimension of teacher empowerment. The professional growth dimension refers to teachers' perceptions of the opportunities they are afforded by their institution to grow and develop professionally and enhance their skill set during a continuous learning endeavor. For teachers to believe that they have skills and ability to help students learn and that they can effectively instruct and compile programs that are successful in promoting student learning is characteristic to the teacher self-efficacy dimension of teacher empowerment [23]. Following on from this conceptualization of teacher empowerment, there has been considerable attention devoted to the exploration of various processes of teacher empowerment as well as investigating their impact on school life.

## 5.1. Processes of teacher empowerment

Apart from the characteristic dimensions of teacher empowerment, many have set out to describe processes that promote the empowerment of teachers. The affordance of decision making opportunities and promotion of increased responsibilities are factors that dominate conceptualizations of teacher empowerment processes. For example, Bolin considers teacher empowerment to involve "Investing in teachers the right to participate in the determination of school goals and policies and the right to exercise professional judgment about the content of the curriculum and means of instruction" ([24], p. 83). Similarly, Bredeson conceives teacher empowerment as "a systematic process by which teachers would assume greater responsibility in their professional work life is rooted in a large body of research in the areas of participatory decision making, professional development, job enrichment, as well as in the areas of professional autonomy and teacher efficacy" ([25], p. 2). According to Melenyzer, true teacher empowerment "leads to increased professionalism as teachers assume responsibility for and an involvement in the decision making process" ([26], p. 16). Perceiving empowerment as a process is also echoed by Short et al. who defines empowerment as "a process whereby school participants develop the competence to take charge of their own growth and resolve their own problems" ([27], p. 38). Unlike these conceptualizations of teacher empowerment, Carl places the enhancement of students' learning experiences as a core function and outcome of teacher empowerment; "Empowerment does not mean unrestrained and unstructured actions, but rather increasing the learning outcomes and other experiences which may flow from it, thereby contributing towards developing the learner's potential. A teaching environment within which teaching may occur optimally can only be created through effective empowerment" ([28], p. xi).

independent thought but rather, they use their power to empower students. Some important factors to consider towards the generation of empowering learning environments include the establishment of strong teacher-student rapports, developing a theoretically sound conceptualization of what it means "to empower" while setting out to promote equitable power dynam-

Power and Empowerment in Schools http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76483 29

A profound precursor to the generation of empowering learning environments is the establishment of strong rapports between individual teachers and individual students. According to Hattie's meta-analysis of what influences student achievement, what teacher's know, do and care is the greatest source of variance among differences in student achievement [42]. The relationship between a teacher and their student is considered to be an interpersonal relationship [43, 44] with students' relational goals and motives implicating this relationship [45, 46]. Among students' relational goals is the need for them to be liked by their teachers [45]. Teachers can help students to achieve these relational goals by ensuring students know they care for them. For students to develop an enhanced sense of empowerment, feeling cared for is vital. The extent to which a teacher cares for their students may be expressed by their immediacy, disclosure, assertiveness, responsiveness, and attractiveness [47]. Teachers need to be realizing just how important it is to express such behaviors given their influence on students' affective learning experiences, to the extent that their cognitive learning is enhanced [47]. Expressing care may be reciprocated, whereby the care that teachers express to their students is reflected in how students will care for their teacher. Providing strong rapports between individual teachers and individual students are established on a foundation of care, teachers

Following a comprehensive analysis of the concept of empowerment in education as well as a critique of stated definitions of empowerment, Ashcroft [8] encapsulates the fundamental pursuit of empowerment that is characterized by the nurture of "belief in capability and competence" (p. 145). A belief stems from personal knowledge or understandings that are antecedents of attitudes and subjective norms; they establish behavioral intentions [48, 49]. Elbow contends that "Belief is the source of a child's power" and new belief stems from success and the infusion of new power it brings for students [50]. Therefore, towards the nurture of student empowerment, teachers are challenged to instill a sense of belief in individual students of their ability/capacity to act in a sufficient/appropriate/effective manner. When seeking to nurture students' beliefs in their capabilities, teachers may firstly consider identifying the factors that suppress such beliefs. Once these factors have been identified, teachers should proceed to promote students' sense of efficacy in completing tasks which they may once have believed as being too complex. Overcoming such limiting pre-existing beliefs towards the positive advancement of students' personal efficacy may be achieved by issuing

can then begin to conceptualize and embrace what it means to empower.

ics in the classroom.

6.1. Empowering teacher-student rapports

6.2. Conceptualizing empowerment

explicit and compelling feedback [51].

6.2.1. Nurturing belief in capability

#### 5.2. The impact of teacher empowerment on school life

The impact of teacher empowerment can implicate school experiences for both teachers and students. The empowerment of teachers is linked to a number of desirable outcomes such as heightened teacher self-esteem [29] and job satisfaction [30–33] as well as enhanced organizational and professional commitment [32, 34, 35] and reduced dysfunctional resistance [36]. Teacher empowerment is also linked to enhanced middle school effectiveness [37] and the establishment of positive school climates [29]. Bogler and Somech [34] claims that principals should establish the conditions necessary for teachers to perceive their competency and status such as affording teachers with opportunities to grow professionally. However, Spreitzer [38] claims that individuals must be psychologically receptive if such empowering conditions are to be fully realized.

The impact of teacher empowerment on student learning is less than straight forward on the other hand. Although one study describes how teacher empowerment is a significant independent predictor of student achievement in standardized proficiency tests in reading and mathematics [37], two separate studies report no direct relationship between teacher empowerment and student academic achievement [39, 40]. According to the findings of Marks and Louis [39], the conditions that are necessary for teacher empowerment to positively influence student performance are understood to involve the affordance of decision making opportunities relating to teaching and learning decisions [37] in a professional teaching community that has collective responsibility for student learning [39]. It is conceived that teacher empowerment encourages teachers to improve how they teach, to instill a belief that student achievement is linked to their own teaching effort as well as promoting the communication and collaboration among teachers in exchanging of information about teaching effectiveness [39]. While considerable empowerment research that has taken place within the educational context has investigated the collective empowerment of teachers on an institutional level from external sources such as principals or board of management [37], less focus has investigated the empowerment of individual teachers [29, 35, 41] and even less attention has been devoted to investigating the empowerment of individual students.
