4. Empowerment

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 social relations [22].

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 empowered person is someone who believes in their ability/capacity to act in a sufficient/ appropriate/effective manner.
