Power

It didn't take Stephen Downes long to say something that would inspire this writing. Early in his presentation to our class he questioned, "How do you teach if you no longer have power over students"? According to Rebore (2001), there are six types of power:

1. Inspirational – Influence of a person based on other people’s admiration and desire to model themselves after him or her.

2. Charismatic – Influence attributed to one’s personal characteristics.

3. Expert – Influence based on special skills or knowledge.

4. Persuasive – Power derived from a person’s ability to allocate and manipulate rewards.

5. Knowledge – Power derived from a person’s ability to control unique and valuable information.

6. Coercive – Power based on fear.

The first three types of power utilize influence rather than control while the last three utilize control rather than influence.

I would like to think that teachers that make a meaningful connection to students will always have power. The power to inspire and make a difference. Most of those teachers also accept that they have a shared expertise with their students. Even though the teacher may be the subject expert, they are still willing to learn from their students. I have never taught a class where I have not learned something from my students. These sentiments are echoed in Kelly C's last blog post (title Effective and Progressive) where he did some informal research with his students.

Unfortunately for education we still have teachers that do not want to put the time and effort into this great profession to build the necessary skills and relationships to become experts of their craft and inspirations to their students. They would rather use the controlling power that they have that comes with the job and pass on they problems that they create to their administrators to solve. This type of philosophical conflict is very challenging for administrators to resolve.

To borrow from Dennis Miller - That's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

Mathman33