CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

Power Relations And Classroom Practice Sessions

Organiser: John D. Kitchens

Power Relations And Classroom Practice: The Teacher and Classroom Practice

Bragg, Sara (Institute of Education, London, and University of Sussex, United Kingdom) PEDAGOGIES OF THE REPRESSED: RETHINKING CLASSROOM ETHICS
Critical and 'liberatory' pedagogies assume too readily that their worthy intentions are sufficient todissipate established hierarchies within educational institutions. Drawing on research with working class teenage students in UK Media Studies classrooms, this paper will illustrate the power effects of textual analysis - a familiar strategy in progressive teaching - showing how it is culpably unreflexive about pedagogic power dynamics and the hierarchical roles it assigns to both teachers and students. However,careful interpretation of students' responses, which are effectively 'repressed' in such practices, can yield insights into youth audiences' existing strategies for managing their media and classroom environments and of the affective, relational and desiring dimensions of learning and teaching. In turn, we can learn from these about how to connect pedagogically to young people's experiences of and pleasures in the media whilst also enhancing accountable and socially just educational practices.

Hakala, Katariina (University of Helsinki, Finland) INSTITUTION IN A BODY. ANALYSING TEACHER'S POSITION IN CLASSROOM PRACTICES
The paper is about the practices of organizing classroom activities of four teachers at a primary school in Helsinki. I have conducted a short ethnographic study at one primary school following the teachers'days at school; in the classrooms, staff room, teachers'weekly meetings, school yard when they had the supervising turn etc. I also discussed with them while moving from a place to another, commented and asked about some situations and interviewed them both individually and as a group. I will present some interpretations of the classroom practices and of the teachers' reflections to those practices. I ask what position the teacher takes in relation to pupils. My initial interpretation is that, in taking that position, a teacher embodies the cultural construction of a school as an institution and that this istitution makes the position tightly framed. What kind of power relations are possible in the classroom?

Osmond, Christopher (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED: AN ALTERNATE CONCEPTION OF RISK AND SAFETY IN CLASSROOM PRACTICE
This paper reconceptualizes institutional responses to "risky" teachers through the lenses of post-Foucauldian conceptions of risk, contemporary performance theory, and mythology. Beginning with a definition of risk derived from the insurance industry, the standardized definition of the "safe/unrisky" teacher that informs administrative assessment and valorization will be established. Examples of teachers who are "risky" to school success according to the hegemonic definition are presented. Bertolt Brecht''s theory of alienation, Lewis Hyde''s exploration of the trickster figure in mythology, and Elizabeth Bell''s pleasure-based economy of performance are explored as sources of alternate schema for establishing the value of a teacher''s unorthodox or excessive practice. The rich interplay of multiple stakeholders' conceptions of "safety" and "risk" is foregrounded. The conclusion presents a more holistic conception of the "safe" teacher, one that values the factors of successful classroom practice that existing administrative assessments exclude.

Saikkonen, Tuija-Leena (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) DIALOGUE IN THE ART CLASS?
In this paper, relations of culture, knowledge and power are addressed by acknowledging not only the different perspectives of teachers and pupils in classroom life, but their institutionally unequal positioning as children and adults. The aim is to explore possibilities for dialogic interaction in the art education classroom. According to Bakhtin, polyphony may emerge when people in a dialogical relationship relate to the world from their different perspectives, e.g. from the positions of an adult vs. a child. Therefore, the teacher wishing to initiate and sustain dialogical interaction in her classroom will need to consider children's social and cultural world, and the ways in which children may enter into and participate in classroom interaction. Conditions and possibilities of dialogue are studied by analysing ethnographic data collected in a school class of children aged 11 and 12.

Kalogiannakis, Michail (University Paris 5, France) MULTIMEDIA AND NEW POWER RELATIONS IN THE CLASSROOM: THE NEW ROLE OF TEACHERS
In this paper we attempt to identify the new roles that some French teachers of physical sciences develop in their class practice when they use communication technologies. Considering Internet and communication technologies as a life long learning tool, important questions are raised about power relations in class practice, culture and pedagogy. Based on content analysis of e-mails in the physical mailing list of the French ministry of education and individual interviews with physical sciences teachers, this research elicits the new role of teachers. New models of teaching seem to be constructed by teachers who feel more active and more dynamic when using communication technologies. They question the traditional role of the teacher who used to be the only source of knowledge. Therefore, new roles of teachers and new power relations emerge with the introduction of these tools.

Power Relations And Classroom Practice: Culture and Classroom Practice

Kitchens, John (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) CULTURAL STUDIES AND CURRICULA: THE HISTORY OF POWER AND THE POWER OF HISTORY
Principally based on educational theory inspired by the work of Walter Benjamin, this paper proposes a certain cultural studies approach to curricula that presupposes a notion of historical materialism as well as a concentration to the everyday life of students. Regardless of area content, infusing the curriculum with this historical context requires relating it to the present and immediate experience of the students in addition to generating more complex representations of power in classroom dialogue. This establishes a dialectical conception of curricula that must remain permanently mutable to the specific conditions of any classroom. Not only does this approach promote a student-centered concept of learning, it also provides the material history that relates to the students' lived experiences with the hope that a better understanding of their place in a specific historical reality creates opportunities for personal praxis.

Helfenbein, Robert (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) NEW TIMES, NEW STAKES: MOMENTS OF TRANSIT, ACCOUNTABILITY AND CLASSROOM PRACTICE
This paper analyzes the recent move to implement high-stakes consequences to a regime of controlled curriculum and standardized testing in public school education. Using Stuart Hall's description and theoretical construction of 'New Times' as a beginning, the conjunctures of contemporary manifestations of late capitalism in the United States will be exposed in the hope of an understanding that leads to activism. To understand the processes of interaction between the highly visceral connection of people to schools and the political interests functioning on the creation of public meaning, it is essential to recognize both the impact of practice on audience and audience's empowering of practice. This "affective economy of everyday life," manifest in the lives of classroom teachers under the climate of high stakes testing, serves as the practice under analysis.

Taylor, Hill (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) POWER AND LITERACY IN SUBURBIA
The aesthetic attitude encouraged by suburbanization has fostered the entrenchment of dominant sanctioned literacies, which have surreptitiously worked to occlude other hidden or vernacular literacies while encouraging a corrupted and egocentric conception of identity and community. This project highlights the impact of contemporary suburban existence on socio-cultural literacy and discourse in secondary schools in the American South. Working from the supposition that the most recent waves of suburbanization in the American South have drastically altered specific social relations and that since "…literacy is essentially social, and it is located in the interaction between people" (Barton, p.3) discursive practice has been fundamentally changed. Also of note is how students use literacy and text in their social practices and everyday activities outside of school (contrasted by what is included in the curriculum of the English/Literature classroom).

Cruz, Ana (St. Louis Community College, USA) IMPROVING THE INSTRUCTION OF CULTURALLY HETEROGENEOUS STUDENT POPULATIONS BY USING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DIALOGUE
There has been a marked increase in the number of culturally diverse students attending college and a concomitant increase in the demand for instructors who can work effectively with these populations. Instructors are being called upon to re-examine the attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions that underlie their teaching, to monitor the process by which they continuously re-define themselves as teachers, and to think critically about their classroom practices. Considering that how/what we teach is a reflection of who we are, the need for an internal dialogue to reflect upon the experience of teaching culturally heterogeneous students is crucial. In addition, the instructors' reflection and re-definition of self through internal dialogue are marked by the role-negotiation and communication that occur with their students (i.e., external dialogue). The process through which an instructor engages in internal and external dialogue, and its results, is discussed in this presentation using a "partial-thematic" autobiographical discourse model.