Study On The Teachers’ Discourse Power In The Classroom Field Of Primary School

The discourse is an important concept in the modern humanities and social sciences, which provide a unique angle of view for the pedagogy study. The interactions between teachers and students become possible owing to the existence of the discourse. The classroom is a subsystem of the society where in the conflict and struggle of power exists, and the discourse power of the teacher takes the dominant place in this fields. The discourse power of the teacher always depresses the vitality of the class collective and hampers the personality development of students under the traditional pattern of education. Because of the new education philosophy that ask or people-oriented education and stimulating the initiative of students, the status and influence of the teachers’discourse power has a subtle shift in the field of classroom. Thus, the discourse power of the teacher need to be re-examined and further investigated from different angles of the sociology and the linguistics.The methods of the chronicles of class and discourse analysis were applied in this study. A field survey was carried out at SY school in Henan province for two months, and detailed and reliable first-hand data were obtained via participant observation and semi-structural interview. Furthermore, the action and function of the teachers’ discourse power were emphatically analyzed in the classroom field through the discourse analysis of the data.Six sections were included in the full text:In the "introduction" section, the reasons of choosing the topic and its significance were elucidated, and the present research status of the teachers’ discourse power at home and abroad was reviewed. Besides, the research methods and process employed in this study were introduced.The section of "chapter 1" is the basis of this study, in which two core concepts, classroom field and the discourse power of the teacher, were defined. Meanwhile, two theoretical bases, Foucault’s theory of power and discourse and Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, were discussed. Based on the existing studies, the classroom field was defined as the multiple relationship of the complicated, variable ubiety between the teacher and the student, and among students in the classroom; and the teachers’ discourse power was defined as the influence of the teacher’s discourse on participants in the classroom field.The section of "Chapter 2" is the core component of this study, which consists of four main parts. The classroom field was divided into physical field and meaning field; and the participants in the classroom fields were teachers and students. The first part of this chapter introduced the operation platform of the teachers’ discourse power, the physical field, which was composed of time allocation and classroom arrangement. In the second part of this chapter, the detailed records of the teaching process in discussion course and new discourse were analyzed, and the thick description of the teachers’ discourse power was made in the meaning field. The third part of this chapter described the behavior of teachers and students in the classroom field. It was considered that the teachers’ discourse powers an objective existence, and it could guarantee the successful teaching process through the control of classroom. However, the power abuse would suppress the classroom vigor and the initiative of students, which would result in silence of the students in classroom, an indirect and silent the way of revolt. And this would have a passive effect on the teacher owing to the disappointment caused by power frustration in the classroom field. Meanwhile, the teachers’ discourse power could also have great impact on teachers themselves. The fourth part of this chapter discussed how to operate the teachers’ discourse power. It was considered that the teachers’ discourse power has overt and covert patterns in the classroom field. The overt discourse power could be further subdivided into flexible and rigid pattern, and the rigid pattern of the overt discourse power would lead to the confrontation between teachers and students. In the classroom field, besides the descending teachers’ discourse power, there is also the ascending students’ discourse power. However, the ascending students’ discourse power hardly attains the expected purpose.In the section of "Chapter 3", the capital structure of the teachers’ discourse power was deconstructed according to the social practice theory and the authority theory. The teacher in the classroom field processes economic, cultural and social capital. Compared to the student, the economic and cultural capital was exclusive for the teacher, which makes the teacher take the advantage. However, both of the teacher and the student process the social capital in the classroom field, which was always used to defy the teacher by the student. From the view of the authority theory, the teachers’ discourse capital consists of educational system, traditions, knowledge and experience.The section of "Chapter 4" discussed how to rationally use the teachers’ discourse power. It was considered that the passive and negative influence of the teachers’ discourse power could be avoided through changing the traditional perception of the teachers’discourse, hegemony elimination and authority reconstruction of the teachers, and strengthening the interaction between teachers and students. The teachers’ discourse power would have a positive effect on the harmonious and orderly classroom field.In the "Conclusion" section, we summarized the research idea of this study. The deficiency and shortages existed in this study were introspected and the orientation of further research was clarified.