| The majority of instructional communication research on power defines it as a tool teachers use to control student behavior, suggesting that student responses in the classroom are directly attributable to a teacher's use of power. Missing from this research are student perceptions of power, and how those perceptions actually affect the choices they make in the classroom. This study focused on getting those missing perceptions.Findings of focus group interviews with undergraduate students and graduate teaching associates suggest that, while some of the choices students make in the classroom are affected by teachers, most of their decisions and motivation come from outside the classroom. In addition, findings indicate that student understandings of power and resistance reflect the predominant discourse on power that it is "possessed" and used to control, an understanding that serves to reify a hierarchical, oppositional relationship between teachers and students. |
