In Rehearsal: Complicating Authority in Undergraduate Critical-Inquiry Classrooms

Abstract

If we in teacher education want emerging teachers to inquire into the complexities of authority and to reimagine how it might operate in schools, then we need firsthand experience troubling it in our own classrooms. To this end, we - three reading education professors - problematized our classroom authority as we sought to enact critical inquiries with preservice teachers. In this qualitative study, our contention is that preservice teachers, in addition to eventually having to manage curriculum, must also face the reality of having to function as authority figures while still maintaining a classroom conducive to meaning making. However, in order to interrupt their traditional images of teacher as authority figure, they need to experience contrasting images. This article provides three lenses through which to explore how authority can be reimagined in critical-inquiry reading education courses.