2. Power

At the root of empowerment is power and according to Nyberg, "The idea of power has lain more completely neglected in education studies than in any other discipline that is of fundamental social interest" ([1], p. 63). Tauber contends that if teachers desire to educate students to the degree which they are capable of successfully coping with an ever-changing and demanding world, they must exercise their power effectively [2]. However, the effective use of power is widely misunderstood by educators [3]. In order to begin to consider the effective use of power, educators need to firstly understand the concept of power but as Common informs, we all know perfectly well what power is—until someone asks us [4]. As a multi-faceted concept that is fundamental to understanding people, their motives, their goals and their actions [4], many scholars have postulated the meaning of power. According to Lukes, having power means that one has the ability to make a difference to the world [5]. Many other conceptualizations of power allude to the ability it affords an individual to have an influence on agenda setting and decision making [6, 7]. Ashcroft considers power as a fundamental personal construct that "develops or stagnates in a social environment, and it functions in a social as well as a personal sphere; yet it is fundamentally a personal construct" ([8], p. 148). Here, power is deemed to be intrinsic to individuals however, Arendt contends that "Power is never the property of an individual, it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together" ([9], p. 44). This follows on from interpretations of how power exists and functions in society. Foucault considers power as an inherently latent phenomenon that sees "individuals circulate between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power. They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation" ([10], p. 98). Foucault presents power as a mysterious system that ebbs and flows among individuals who are perceived as vehicles of power. As vehicles of power, these individual fuels the ebbs and flows of power. In stark contrast, Giddens interprets power to be intrinsic to human agency. Giddens ([11], p. 9) describes the concept of agency in concerning "events of which an individual is the perpetrator, in the sense that the individual could, at any phase in a given sequence of conduct, have acted differently. Whatever happened would not have happened if that individual had not intervened". As such, for an individual to have power, they would have the capability to act in a way that would "'make a difference". An individual who ceases or loses this capability to "make a difference" nullifies their agency and ability to exercise power. Unlike Foucault who considers power as an allinclusive but latent phenomenon, Giddens acknowledges individuals as conscious and knowledgeable beings with the ability to create, influence, and limit power [11]. In the context of the school institution, if teachers and students akin are viewed as conscious and knowledgeable beings with the agency to act within their own desires, it is essential for teachers to understand how power manifests to influence teaching and learning experiences in their classrooms.

of power [12]. By granting authority to principals, due to either their ability to distribute rewards or because of their knowledge and expertise, teachers qualify the power of principals [12]. While teachers may not have full control of how principals operationalize their power, teachers have full control of the power that they operationalize in their classrooms. Being recognized as authoritative individuals with expert knowledge and expertise in the classroom qualifies teachers' power. However, since gaining and exerting power is considered as a basic human need and within the classroom, this can implicate the learning environment [13]. For example, conflict can arise if needs for power by either teachers or students are unmet [14]. Teachers can exercise their power in different ways as described throughout Tauber's five bases of teacher power. Tauber [2] adapted the five bases of power conceived within the business world by French et al. [15] to purport the five bases of power that teachers wield in the classroom. These five bases of power include (i) coercive power, (ii) reward power, (iii) legiti-

Power and Empowerment in Schools http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76483 25

• Coercive power derives from the student belief that the teacher possesses the ability to punish or refrain from punishing. Some of the characteristics of this type of power include continuous and exhaustive teacher monitoring, emphasizing compliance rather than cooperation, student rebellion, retaliation, lying, cheating and withdrawing from learning. • Reward power derives from the student belief that the teacher possesses the ability to distribute or withhold rewards not obtainable elsewhere. Such reward power involves introducing stimulants that students perceive to be pleasant such as recognition and

privileges as well as removing stimulants that students perceive to be unpleasant.

assignment through respect for the status of the teachers' position.

• Legitimate power derives from the student belief that the teacher has the right to prescribe behavior given the status of their position. Here, teachers have the legitimate power to tell students what to do such as assigning homework and generally students accepts this

• Referent power is a personal power that stems from students' identification with the teacher and their desire to be liked by their teacher. This power extends beyond the classroom as the student, in the less powerful position, bids to emulate the personal characteristics of teacher

• Expert power derives from the student belief that the teacher possesses some special knowledge or expertise which is important for achieving a particular task they are presented with. Exercising theses power bases effectively is a professional obligation for teachers [2].

Although teachers' power may operationalize throughout these five power bases, detrimental consequences may arise if teachers operationalize their power in a manner that oppresses or inhibits students' creativity, critical thinking or independent thought. Educator and philosopher, Freire provides an account of how teachers can negatively use their power to oppress students by embracing the banking concept of education [16]. Here, this banking concept of education portrays education as a pursuit that is characterized by teachers depositing information into the minds of their students who go on to store this information. In this regard, students are passive in their acceptance of the information being deposited in their minds. By annulling students' creative power, their passive acceptance of information imbues habits of

mate power, (iv) referent power and (v) expert power.

who wields referent power.

## 3. Power in schools

Power exists and functions in different ways in schools, both inside and outside the classroom. Outside the classroom, research describes how principals influence teachers through their use of power [12]. By granting authority to principals, due to either their ability to distribute rewards or because of their knowledge and expertise, teachers qualify the power of principals [12]. While teachers may not have full control of how principals operationalize their power, teachers have full control of the power that they operationalize in their classrooms. Being recognized as authoritative individuals with expert knowledge and expertise in the classroom qualifies teachers' power. However, since gaining and exerting power is considered as a basic human need and within the classroom, this can implicate the learning environment [13]. For example, conflict can arise if needs for power by either teachers or students are unmet [14]. Teachers can exercise their power in different ways as described throughout Tauber's five bases of teacher power. Tauber [2] adapted the five bases of power conceived within the business world by French et al. [15] to purport the five bases of power that teachers wield in the classroom. These five bases of power include (i) coercive power, (ii) reward power, (iii) legitimate power, (iv) referent power and (v) expert power.

2. Power

24 Contemporary Pedagogies in Teacher Education and Development

3. Power in schools

At the root of empowerment is power and according to Nyberg, "The idea of power has lain more completely neglected in education studies than in any other discipline that is of fundamental social interest" ([1], p. 63). Tauber contends that if teachers desire to educate students to the degree which they are capable of successfully coping with an ever-changing and demanding world, they must exercise their power effectively [2]. However, the effective use of power is widely misunderstood by educators [3]. In order to begin to consider the effective use of power, educators need to firstly understand the concept of power but as Common informs, we all know perfectly well what power is—until someone asks us [4]. As a multi-faceted concept that is fundamental to understanding people, their motives, their goals and their actions [4], many scholars have postulated the meaning of power. According to Lukes, having power means that one has the ability to make a difference to the world [5]. Many other conceptualizations of power allude to the ability it affords an individual to have an influence on agenda setting and decision making [6, 7]. Ashcroft considers power as a fundamental personal construct that "develops or stagnates in a social environment, and it functions in a social as well as a personal sphere; yet it is fundamentally a personal construct" ([8], p. 148). Here, power is deemed to be intrinsic to individuals however, Arendt contends that "Power is never the property of an individual, it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together" ([9], p. 44). This follows on from interpretations of how power exists and functions in society. Foucault considers power as an inherently latent phenomenon that sees "individuals circulate between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power. They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation" ([10], p. 98). Foucault presents power as a mysterious system that ebbs and flows among individuals who are perceived as vehicles of power. As vehicles of power, these individual fuels the ebbs and flows of power. In stark contrast, Giddens interprets power to be intrinsic to human agency. Giddens ([11], p. 9) describes the concept of agency in concerning "events of which an individual is the perpetrator, in the sense that the individual could, at any phase in a given sequence of conduct, have acted differently. Whatever happened would not have happened if that individual had not intervened". As such, for an individual to have power, they would have the capability to act in a way that would "'make a difference". An individual who ceases or loses this capability to "make a difference" nullifies their agency and ability to exercise power. Unlike Foucault who considers power as an allinclusive but latent phenomenon, Giddens acknowledges individuals as conscious and knowledgeable beings with the ability to create, influence, and limit power [11]. In the context of the school institution, if teachers and students akin are viewed as conscious and knowledgeable beings with the agency to act within their own desires, it is essential for teachers to understand

how power manifests to influence teaching and learning experiences in their classrooms.

Power exists and functions in different ways in schools, both inside and outside the classroom. Outside the classroom, research describes how principals influence teachers through their use


Although teachers' power may operationalize throughout these five power bases, detrimental consequences may arise if teachers operationalize their power in a manner that oppresses or inhibits students' creativity, critical thinking or independent thought. Educator and philosopher, Freire provides an account of how teachers can negatively use their power to oppress students by embracing the banking concept of education [16]. Here, this banking concept of education portrays education as a pursuit that is characterized by teachers depositing information into the minds of their students who go on to store this information. In this regard, students are passive in their acceptance of the information being deposited in their minds. By annulling students' creative power, their passive acceptance of information imbues habits of 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 relinquish some of their power to empower students.

empowered person is someone who believes in their ability/capacity to act in a sufficient/

Power and Empowerment in Schools http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76483 27

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

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

empowerment as well as investigating their impact on school life.

5.1. Processes of teacher empowerment

appropriate/effective manner.

5. Empowerment in schools
