The Study

Michigan State University College of Education Assistant Professor Mary Juzwik examines the problem of how teachers establish desirable positions of authority in their classrooms. Her analysis demonstrates how one teacher established authority in her classroom through the use of various rhetorical means. 

Discussion

Juzwik notes that teachers often question how to be authoritative without becoming authoritarian. “The tension facing teachers is how to assume an emergent authority—appropriate responsibility and control of what happens in that classroom—without becoming power-abusing authoritarians.” She believes that “narrative performance” is a powerful yet little studied method by which teachers can establish authority. She defines narrative performance as a position in which teachers must continuously persuade students by discourse, rather than simply dictating facts as static “givens.” Juzwik’s study involved a middle school class of 24 students who were part of a six-week literacy unit about the Holocaust. The teacher was the school’s literacy specialist in her third year of teaching. Juzwik observed all class periods, videotaped classes and examined class materials. Her research identified six types of narrative discourses used by the teacher. These included the eventnarrative, experience narrative, narrative description, hypothetical narrative, procedural narrative, and dramatic monologue. Juzwik also found that the particular configuration of these categories pointed to a distinctive teaching ethos or quality of authority. In some cases, the teacher’s authority was based on the role of teacher as objective, knowledgeable narrator; in other cases, it was based on the role of teacher as storyteller, or teacher as historical commentator, as well other “performance” roles. Juzwik believes that the analysis may help educators critically consider their often tacit narrative discourse in order to gain a greater awareness of how they might employ narratives differently in their teaching. “Perhaps this analysis will be most useful for pre-service teachers for whom the cultivation of authority can be a mystifying problem,” she concludes. “[The teacher] reveals the subtle rhetorical means through which one authoritative ethos in teaching is established.  [Her] example illuminates narrative pathways for teachers to claim authority in their teaching and to model such authority for their students.” 

What It Means to You

Do teachers in your district struggle with the difference between authoritative and authoritarian? Would a deeper understanding of the various rhetorical stances a teacher can take in order to develop positive authority and credibility in the classroom be helpful?

For More Information

Juzwik, M. M.  (2006). Performing curriculum:  Building ethos through narrative in pedagogical discourse.  Teachers College Record, 108(4), 489-538.