Negotiating Authority in an Undergraduate Teacher Education Course: A Qualitative Investigation (Report‪)‬

Research Problem and Purpose Negotiating authority, a multifaceted, on-going process of mutual bargaining over the power to determine or the right to control, permeates all facets of teaching experience (Shor, 1996; Winograd, 2002). Considered by many educational theorists to be an outgrowth of collaborative dialogue and decision-making that helps foster active student engagement and investment in learning, different aspects of negotiating authority have been theorized as essential dimensions of democratic education (Barber, 1984; Boomer, Lester, Onore, & Cook, 1992; Shor, 1992). Classrooms in which authority is purposefully negotiated, however, remain more the exception than the rule in educational practice. Traditional conceptions of authoritarianism persist to such an extent that efforts to negotiate authority are commonly perceived as completely abandoning it (Oyler, 1996).