Dealing with Issues of Control, Power, and Authority in the College Classroom

Virleen M. Carlson
Cornell University

A beginning college teacher confronts issues of self confidence almost immediately upon teaching for the first time. "Will I make a mistake in front of the class? Will the students take me seriously? Will I be able to answer their questions? Will I make a fool of myself?" Those are a few of the common questions, albeit sometimes unvoiced.

An experienced teacher realizes he or she has cultivated a "persona" or a presence in the classroom that seems to work most, if not all, of the time. Every once in a while, what may seem like a "power struggle" will arise and the teacher will have self-doubts. "Could I have handled that situation differently? Did I lose control of my emotions and/or actions? How can I go back into that classroom after what happened and re-gain my authority?"

In the best of all possible worlds, the college teacher can adopt a role, if you will, upon walking into the classroom. An introverted person becomes somewhat extroverted during the time in which he or she is interacting in the classroom, while the born extravert might play the role of the silent, wise listener in order to facilitate discussion. Once the teacher identifies his or her natural personalities, or "presences," found within, these roles can be called upon for use with the appropriate one brought into play for each student, or groups of students, as needed--sometimes changing as often as the rotation of faces that parade in front of one's eyes during office hours. Two such examples might be the working metaphors of the "coach" or the "big sister" where the teaching assistant or young professor carries the aura of, "I can guide you through this course if you take some pointers from me." These metaphors quite naturally lead the students into playing their roles, and thus some "scripts" are played out in the college classroom, however subtly.

A brief overview from the pertinent literature shows relevant information from the areas of communication: business and professional communication, studies on body language, nonverbal communication. Additional information can be found in the literature of student ratings of instruction, particularly those which focus on gender bias in the classroom.

In the first instance, a teacher can do some troubleshooting about what kinds of problems might be expected. In other words, "What kinds of expectations do you create?" For example, you might want to know what the pitfalls might be, i.e. a class that "clashes" in discussion might be a class that is set up by the teacher to clash by comments such as, "Hey, we really got some great discussion going to day. You guys really know how to argue!" Another teacher might hint, "I don't want to give away too many specifics for fear that you might just give me back papers that say my ideas only." For this kind of classroom interaction, you will want to do some serious audience analysis, market research, and generalization about just who they are and what they want.

Scripts: On that first day when impressions are formed, we unwittingly step into a type of stereotype of our profession which I will call our "script." This is another word for the "profiling" we all do, and it is not altogether bad. We try to size up the teacher, and the teacher tries to size up the class members in order to have a basis from which to spread out our next level of assumptions. Without these, we cannot interact with people. For example, a student will say she is from Argentina, and this gives the teacher a basis from which to ask, "Will you be able to go back to Argentina over the break?" See how this forms the bottom layer of our human interaction?

As a teacher, the most extreme example of playing into a script is mentioned by the "out" gay community. An article (see Elliott) has been written about whether, for example, a lesbian teacher can come "out" to her students without having them only define her from that point onward as an "out" lesbian." Certainly there are advantages and disadvantages to both sides of this script, and it might be something whereby the teacher reveals this only after a time and when a certain level of trust has been achieved in the classroom. Others might need to include being "out" as who they are on the first day.

It is important to define ones own teaching style, and it is helpful to look at this issue as which scripts one plays into or rails against. For example, my experience shows that I seem to fit a script matching someone's former high school English teacher, with a little bit of "mom's" attitude thrown in. I can quite easily play those scripts, but I deviate from them in that I am quite a control freak. Thus, when I might be unforgiving about a deadline (from my journalism past), there is a bit of cognitive dissonance about why the "English teacher" they conned or the "Mom" they bamboozled doesn't react in what the student might decide is a predetermined "given." When I teach adult learners who have been out in the work world a while, I play the script of a co-worker or colleague, and deadlines are accepted as a matter of policy.

Five classroom scripts for breakout sessions are "the mom," "big sister/big brother," the "purist, or the expert," the "business person," and the "coach." All of these have their advantages in the classroom, and, not surprisingly, their disadvantages. To take one example, the business person starts and ends class on time, seems highly organized, and gives the air of the professional. However, this script when played out during office hours might be too formal. The skillful teacher would adjust his or her script to reflect "the business person who works in a Friday-dress-down office."

Teachers develop a classroom presence through credibility: Another strategy in the "being proactive" camp is to establish credibility early in the semester, preferably on the first day, and a little bit each day thereafter until the roll settles down and all newcomers are assimilated. This is particularly important for a teaching assistant who may not have a reputation with the students. For example, there are some proven ways from speech communication to establish credibility early in a talk or presentation, and these methods can be adopted by the classroom teachers. For example, a teacher can give the name of a college degree obtained, tell information about a dissertation in progress, cite titles of a few good books they've just read pertaining to the topic, and identify with the class through a few well-chosen remarks that show insight into the student's situation or maybe even comment about the campus political or social scene. A teacher will want to show empathy for the students, yet set an aura of credibility in force. My favorite presenter, Dr. Pam Robbins, opens her workshop on presentation skills by tossing in the phrase, "When I was a runner-up for Miss Hawaii...." She seemed poised and well-spoken enough that we in the audience were believers.

Identify a common goal. I'll explain this concept through an example that many people might be able to identify with. I'll take you back to an American high school: "Why do high school physics teachers seem to never have any discipline problems?" and "Why do high school freshmen English teachers in a required course seem to have so many discipline problems?" Set aside all the common answers: maturity, self-selection, better teachers, smaller classes. Those are not the real answers. The teacher and the students have an identical goal: In the case of the physics teachers and students, that goal is to prepare the students for an easy freshman year in college. They are in total agreement and nothing causes them to deviate from that goal. The ninth grade English teacher might want the students to be well-prepared for a sophomore year, but the students might just want to put in time and not have to repeat the year. The second class is ripe for any number of control, power, and authority issues in the classroom. Now jump to the workplace. Management and workers must decide upon their common goal with no hidden agendas. Thus, the workplace mission statement was born. In the classroom, we as teachers try to come up with objectives, but they only work if they are the objectives of the entire group. Otherwise, there is a hidden curriculum and a set of hidden norms that drive the classroom, often having absolutely nothing to do with music, English, biology, or another course of study. The teacher must identify the goals of 300 or 500 different people in large college classrooms, a daunting task at best. We, as teachers, ask, "Why are you taking this course?" We must then analyze this data, and seek out what exactly the comments mean. For example, when a student says it is a required course, it could mean they are negatively motivated, or it could mean that they are optimistic about making the best of an unavoidable situation. The teacher must adjust the course immediately to meet the needs of the students. In Animal Science, Professor Dan Brown at Cornell says he finds students in his class who might be interested in ostrich farming or rabbit raising, and if he spends an entire semester on everything but that student's need, he lets down that student.

In the reactive portion of a college classroom, we might find ourselves going along quite smoothly only to be "blindsided" by a control, power, or authority issue in the classroom once the class has gotten underway. At this time, it is too late to be pro-active; we can only be reactive. Teachers want to know what can be done once a situation develops. At this time, perhaps a student, or perhaps the entire class (a nightmare), seems to be completely at odds with each other and with you, the teacher. Sometimes you have mis-identified your analysis of the common goal, and it is time to go back and re-define where your goal and their goal are identical, and where you can meet on common ground. In a writing class where students have been told for years by former teachers that their writing is "A" quality, it is difficult to get to the college classroom and receive a "B" or a "C." It is easier to attack the messenger rather than the message. Perhaps the common goal is not for the students to become better writers, but for them to become better thinkers. Perhaps everyone can agree that this is the goal, one worth working towards. One teaching assistant explains: "You're gifted but you're going to have to work hard like everybody else." The TA gives the example of President Bill Clinton who overcame a certain amount of adversity on his way to the top, where he still confronts it daily. In "Welcome Back, Kotter," an old TV show, the teachers AND students just want to survive, but they are in total agreement and that's what makes the classroom work. Finally, some times it's a case of adjusting the teacher's "head" instead of all those other people the teacher cannot control.

Some teachers seem to have no need for audience analysis, script or role playing, or common goals. For them, it must seem effortless to have a class that just "clicks" each and every semester. My natural response is that all of us will have a class that "clicks" from time to time, but it must not be left to sheer "luck of the draw". There is a certain amount of skill to be learned. We can carefully analyze what goes right in the classroom and seek to recreate it each and every semester. There are no guarantees that even the most experienced teachers won't be caught from time to time, sending them back to the proverbial "drawing board" of teaching, but all of us would like to say that good teaching can be done by many, many people...not just a selected few.

Boice, Robert (1996) "Classroom Incivilities" Research in Higher Education 37(4): 453-487.

Boice, Robert (1996) First-Order Principles for College Teachers.

Caplan, Paula (1992) Lifting a Ton of Feathers: A Woman's Guide to Survival in the Academic World, Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press.

Elliott, Mary, (date unavailable). "Coming Out in the Classroom: A Return to the Hard Place." College English, 58, no. 6, 693-707.

Henley, Nancy (1977) Body Politics: Power, Sex, and Nonverbal Communication, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall.

Knapp, Mark (1980) Essentials of Nonverbal Communication. New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Sadker, Myra and David (1994) Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Notes, inspiration, assistance from Craig Triplett, C. A. Carlson, and Kimerly Cornish, Department of English, Cornell University; and Susan Roberts, Department of Chemical Engineering, Cornell University.

Contact:
Virleen M. Carlson
Cornell University
E-mail: vmc3@cornell.edu