Negotiating Authority by Designing Individualized Grading Contracts

Abstract

This qualitative study examined how authority was negotiated in an undergraduate teacher education course in which I, as the teacher of the course, involved students in establishing their obligations for the semester by designing individualized grading contracts. The findings suggest that seeking mutually satisfactory agreement, finding several solutions to the problems being negotiated, compromising based on principle rather than pressure, and deriving legitimacy from mutually recognized sources represent potential frameworks for negotiating authority in teacher education. Through modeling congruence with my personal, pedagogical, and professional beliefs, I helped reframe our underlying focus for the semester, reconfigure the intellectual atmosphere of the class, and reconstruct our working relationship, thereby accomplishing a reasonable and realistic level of change in our approach to grades while fostering a pedagogy of teacher education consistent with democratic aims. Such knowledge is important for expanding our understanding of how authority is negotiated in teacher education settings while also informing efforts to foster democratic teacher education practices and prepare future teachers to teach democratically.