Pace 2007

Review of Educational Research
March 2007, Vol. 77, No. 1, pp. 4–27

DOI: 10.3102/003465430298489
Understanding Authority in Classrooms:

A Review of Theory, Ideology, and Research
Judith L. Pace
University of San Francisco
Annette Hemmings
University of Cincinnati
Authority is a fundamental, problematic, and poorly understood component

of classroom life. A better understanding of classroom authority can be
achieved by reviewing writings on social theory, educational ideology, and
qualitative research in schools. Social theories provide important analytical
tools for examining the constitutive elements of authority but fall short of
explaining its variability and contextual influences. Discussion of educa-
tional ideologies offers insights into the debates, historical contexts, and pol-
icy and reform agendas that shape the politics of authority while neglecting
empirical realities. Qualitative studies present empirical data and analyses
on the challenges intrinsic to classroom relations, but, exceptions aside, they
often lack explicit attention to authority. More research focused on classroom
authority as a social construction is needed to address critical educational
concerns for contemporary practitioners, policy makers, and researchers.
KEYWORDS: classroom authority, classroom relations.

Sociologist Willard Waller (1932/1961) in the early 1930s characterized the
school as “a despotism in a state of perilous equilibrium” (p. 10). He argued that
schools are instruments of mass education in which students are antagonistic to con-
straints imposed on their spontaneous natures and a course of study that is largely
unrelated to their own personal interests. Teachers working within the bureaucracy
of the school must assert their dominance over students. But their dominance is
never ensured, because conflict and resistance are always lying in wait, ready to
spring. Authority relations between teachers and students are thus unstable and exist
in a “quivering” balance that may be upset at any moment (p. 383).
More than seventy years after Waller’s (1932/1961) writing, the problem of
authority remains strikingly resonant. For classroom learning to take place, teach-
ers must persuade students to cooperate, and students must be willing give their
assent to what is “deliberately taught” (Erickson, 1987). Society traditionally
entrusts teachers with the formal right and responsibility to take charge in the class-
room and expects students to obey. The character of teacher-student authority rela-
tions has great bearing on the quality of students’ educational experience and
teachers’ work. But the actual enactment of classroom authority involves ongoing
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Understanding Authority in Classrooms
negotiations between teachers and students influenced by numerous and often con-
flicting institutional, cultural, and societal factors (Metz, 1978).
Authority continues to be a provocative term and a poorly understood phenom-
enon despite past insights. It has been equated with the most enlightened forms of
leadership as well as heavy-handed discipline and unjust oppression (Peters, 1966).
It is confusing in part because people are both attracted to, and repulsed by, author-
ity (Sennett, 1980). Americans admire strong leadership and expert knowledge;
however, they resist the power and dictates of authority figures, and they strongly
believe in egalitarianism.
Contradictions of authority are especially salient in the realm of formal education,
in which teachers are expected to impose social controls on groups of students while
liberating individual human potential (Franklin, 1986). Views of classroom author-
ity in the United States have wildly diverged, influenced by conflicting educational
ideologies. In the 1960s and 1970s, progressive educational thinkers rejected tradi-
tional authority as an oppressive force, whereas in the 1980s, conservatives criticized
schools for abdicating authority (Hurn, 1985). More recently, some education schol-
ars have described the benefits of teachers sharing authority with even very young
students (see Oyler, 1996). Others have argued that chaos and violence plague
schools as teachers refuse to exercise moral authority, because the courts have
decided against them in so many legal suits (see Arum, 2003). Qualitative studies
have shown that authority relations take strikingly different forms depending on a
variety of contextual factors (Anyon, 1983; Hemmings, 2003; Hemmings & Metz,
1990; Metz, 1978; Oakes, Gamoran, & Page, 1992; Pace, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c,
2006; Pace & Hemmings, 2006).
In addition to its complexity, inadequate understanding of classroom authority
can also be attributed to neglect of explicit attention to authority in qualitative
research conducted in schools (Hurn, 1985). Groundbreaking studies in the 1960s
and 1970s yielded crucial insights into the dynamics, contextual influences, and
consequences of authority, or the rejection of it, in classrooms and schools (Metz,
1978; Swidler, 1979). Such research waned in the 1980s and 1990s. Although
numerous qualitative inquiries focusing on educational inequalities related to race,
ethnicity, social class, gender, and other social factors have explored related phe-
nomena such as student resistance, these studies have not included explicit and the-
oretically grounded analysis of teacher-student authority relations.
Our argument in this review is that a better understanding of classroom author-
ity is imperative and requires an integration of knowledge from writings on social
theory, educational ideology, and empirical qualitative studies of schooling. Social
theory provides a definitional foundation needed to distinguish authority from
other kinds of social relationships, such as power, with which it is often confused.
Exploration of educational ideologies reveals the ongoing debates and curricular
struggles, historical contexts, and political agendas affecting authority. Qualitative
studies illustrate the thorny realities of classroom life and the salience of local and
larger influences on teacher-student relations. Taken together, these bodies of lit-
erature show that authority involves essential elements, but is also a social con-
struction constituted by interactions between teachers and students that are variable
in their forms and meanings, and are shaped by contextual factors.1
Because authority is so fundamental a feature of classroom life, to understand
it in this way is crucial for considering practices, policies, and research aimed at
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improving the quality of schooling and ameliorating educational inequalities. This
review points to the need for more interpretive studies that shed light on the con-
struction of classroom authority in a variety of locations and that investigate the
influence of current reforms and debates.
Social Theory Defines Core Elements of Authority
Sociologist of education Mary Haywood Metz (1978) drew on the work of Weber,
Durkheim, and other social theorists in the following definition of authority:
Authority is distinguished . . . by the superordinate’s right to command and
subordinate’s duty to obey. This right and duty stem from the crucial fact that
the interacting persons share a relationship which exists for the service of a
moral order to which both owe allegiance. This moral order may be as dif-
fuse as the way of life of a traditional society or as specific as the pragmatic
goals of a manufacturing organization. But in any case, all participants have
a duty to help realize the moral order through their actions. (p. 26)
Metz emphasized, as did Max Weber (1925/1947), that the right of a person to give
commands depends on others’ belief in his or her legitimacy as an authority figure.
This person’s directives are carried out only if people occupying more subordinate
roles are willing to give their consent (or assent) to do what is expected of them
(Barnard, 1950). Authority, in other words, is a social relationship in which some
people are granted the legitimacy to lead and others agree to follow.
Metz (1978) explained that this hierarchical relationship of authority is justified
by, and serves, a moral order. Moral orders are composed of shared purposes, val-
ues, and norms intended to hold individuals together and guide the proper way to
realize institutional goals (Hemmings, 2006; Selznick, 1992). Authority relations
are stronger when everyone feels allegiance to a shared moral order. Conflict
inevitably arises when a moral order is unsettled or contested. There are, as Metz
and others have pointed out, different types of authority.
Types of Authority: Contributions From Weber and Durkheim

The roots of sociological conceptions of authority are in Max Weber’s
(1925/1947) work. Weber identified what he termed “ideal types” of authority
rooted in different sources of legitimacy. Metz (1978) and others have used these
types to analyze classroom roles and relationships (see Grant, 1988; Pace, 2003a,
2003b, 2003c, 2006). Traditional authority, the first type, is based on established
beliefs that grant legitimacy to those in ruling positions. Authority figures serve
traditions through their commands and obedience, and loyalty is given to them in
return. Although they have the right to make individual decisions, their legitimacy
is compromised if they overstep the bounds of tradition. According to Metz, teach-
ers exercising traditional authority uphold the time-honored conventions of formal
schooling and act in loco parentis, whereby, like parents, they expect students to
obey them simply because they occupy the role of teacher.
The second type, charismatic authority, occurs when exceptional individuals
evoke emotional attachment and garner unusually high prestige. Charismatic
teachers inspire students with their passion and commitment and are not bound by
official rules or conventions. Their legitimacy depends on their ability to continue
to satisfy students’ needs and interests.
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The third type, legal-rational authority (also known as bureaucratic authority),
is supported by rules and policies based on rational values. It gives people in
higher ranking positions within an institutional bureaucracy the right to issue and
enforce commands, which includes the power of using rewards or punishments.
Bureaucratic teachers are those who enact the role of a boss in the workplace of the
classroom.
Sociologists following Weber identified professional authority as a fourth type,
distinct from legal-rational authority. It is based on the expertise needed to achieve
consensual aims (Blau, 1974; Parsons, 1947). Teachers who construct authority by
assuming the role of the professional expert have a strong command of subject mat-
ter knowledge and pedagogical skills. Metz (1978), Grant (1988), and Pace (2003a,
2006) have argued that this claim to legitimacy is most salient for teachers because
it speaks to their ability to accomplish educational goals.
Emile Durkheim (1956) emphasized the importance of teachers’ moral author-
ity, which he described as “that influence which imposes upon us all the moral
power that we acknowledge as superior to us” (p. 29). Teachers interpret the great
moral ideas of their times and countries. They represent and uphold the moral order
of the school and society. Durkheim states that one of the primary responsibilities
of teachers is to teach students the rules of good conduct.
Distinguishing types of authority is useful for analyzing teachers’ roles and stu-
dents’ acceptance or rejection of them. However, as Weber (1925/1947) pointed
out, such ideal types in reality often do not exist in their pure form. Types of author-
ity in classrooms are inevitably blended or “hybridized” as teachers interact with
students (Pace, 2003b).
Dimensions of Authority: Contributions From Midcentury Social Scientists
In addition to identifying the constitutive parts of authority and defining ideal
types, social theorists have discussed dimensions that support authority relations.
One dimension is the quality of communication. Political theorist Carl Friedrich
(1958) maintained that “authority rests upon the ability to issue communications
which are capable of reasoned elaboration” (p. 29). Although the rationale for com-
mands does not always have to be stated, the potential for giving that rationale is
a requirement of authority. Friedrich asserted that authority rests on agreement
rather than obedience. Sociologist Chester Barnard (1950) discussed another
dimension, conditions for consent. Subordinates must understand directives, see
them as consistent with organizational purposes, believe that they are compatible
with their own self-interests, and be mentally and physically able to fulfill them.
These conditions are clearly relevant to the classroom; it is surprising that they
have not been applied to classroom research.
Definitions and analytically useful conceptualizations of classroom authority
can also be drawn from ideas specific to educational scholarship. Gaining cooper-
ation poses special problems for teachers. Several educational sociologists and
anthropologists have explored the dimension of trust, which is necessary for forg-
ing the kinds of affective bonds that generate obedience and the motivation to learn
(Bidwell, 1970; Erickson, 1987; McDermott, 1977; Spady, 1974). Bidwell (1970)
pointed out that unlike doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, a teacher’s job is
to develop knowledge, skills, and habits in children and adolescents who are invol-
untary clients. He explained that trust is often problematic in K-12 classrooms
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because teacher-student relationships are involuntary, collective rather than
dyadic, and not based on the exchange of services and fees. Trust in many other
organizations is forged on the bases of organizational prestige, the reputations of
professionals, and the extent to which clients perceive organizations as helping
them. In schools, trust depends more on the reputations of teachers and school, the
ages of the students, how much students perceive that their education will be of
real value to them, and whether students feel teachers are treating them fairly.
Other researchers have explained how the unfair use of power in the classroom,
such as failing students to punish them, often results in student mistrust and acts
of rebellion (Erickson, 1986; Werthman, 1963).
On the basis of findings from her ethnographic study of authority in two junior
high schools, Metz (1978) theorized that authority is one of several resources used
by teachers for social control. In practice, these strategies are often used to
strengthen or substitute for authority. One of them is the arrangement of the class-
room situation. Teachers have the prerogative to decide the content and structure
of their classes, the physical setup, and the rules and routines. “Routines confi-
dently established,” Metz wrote, “take on an air of inevitability [as] students come
to see them as an inherent part of school” (p. 98).
Other control strategies discussed by Metz (1978) include exchange, influence,
and coercion. Exchange involves the use of incentives that function as rewards given
in exchange for cooperation. Teachers dole out rewards in the form of good grades,
high placement in the tracking system, diplomas, and so forth. Grades also may be
used as punishments or disincentives to challenge teachers’ commands (see
Werthman, 1963). But exchange can be subtle, as, for example, when a teacher bends
the rules and students feel obliged to return the favor. (See Blau, 1974, on reciproc-
ity.) Teachers also use personal influence as a resource for control. They draw on
personal assets such as charm, attractiveness, prestigious accomplishments, and even
the admission of vulnerabilities to persuade or cajole students to cooperate with them
(see Swidler, 1979). At the other extreme, teachers may use coercion. This includes
tactics such as reprimanding or embarrassing students, making them move their
seats, sending them out of the classroom, giving them detention, and expelling or fail-
ing them. Studying the uses of these other resources is crucial because they coexist
with and greatly influence the character of classroom authority relations.
Although social theories offer crucial definitions of and analytical tools for
understanding classroom authority, they have not delved as deeply into the politi-
cal debates, curricular struggles, policy and reform movements, and other ideo-
logical forces influencing the politics of authority.
Ideological Debates Shape Understandings of Authority
Debates Over School Authority From the 1960s

to the 1980s: Hurn’s Overview
The political dimensions of authority are ideologically charged. Historical debates
since the 1960s have greatly influenced interpretations of authority and how it
should, or should not, be exercised in classrooms. Sociologist Christopher Hurn’s
(1985) essay on changes in school authority offers a useful introduction to ideolog-
ical stances and their links to social theory. He argued that from 1960 to 1980, an
unprecedented shift away from traditional authority took place in schools and society.
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This shift emerged from the social and political transformations of the 1960s. U.S.
citizens questioned forms of authority, demanded equal rights for marginalized
groups such as Black Americans and women, protested the Vietnam War, and
rejected conventional mores. The courts granted students new rights to freedom of
expression (Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969) and due process (Goss v. Lopez in 1975).
As a result, disciplinary procedures in high schools and classrooms were restricted.
Hurn (1985) acknowledged that the extent to which progressive ideology
changed school practices is debatable, especially at the high school level. But he
asserted that these social, political, and legal changes led to a freer, more relaxed
school climate. He argued that authority shifted from traditional, in loco parentis
relations toward a progressive, professional model. Hurn referred to educationists
in the 1960s, such as Silberman (1970) and Kohl (1967), who advocated limiting
the scope of authority to educational matters and claiming teachers’ professional
expertise, namely, the ability to educate youth, as its source of legitimacy. Students
were to be granted some freedom of choice and the right to know the reasons
behind directives. The progressives were heavily influenced by the philosophy of
John Dewey (1899, 1916, 1938), who promoted a model of education premised on
the beliefs that students become more engaged in meaningful learning if curricula
recognize individual interests and real-life experiences and when instructional
practices encourage moral and intellectual autonomy as well as joint reflective
inquiry. The progressives rejected traditional authority because it inhibited the
“intellectual and moral autonomy” of students (Hurn, 1985, p. 45) and perpetrated
discrimination against students different from the mainstream (e.g., poor students,
Black students).
Hurn (1985) explained that another ideological camp in the late 1960s and early
1970s consisted of radical neo-Marxist thinkers, such as Bowles and Gintis (1976),
who asserted that schooling was controlled by capitalist interests. These scholars
argued that classroom relations corresponded to the same types of disparate treat-
ment on the basis of race, class, and gender seen in the workplace. According to this
view, authority functioned to socialize the majority of students to fulfill subordinate
workplace roles. Radicals claimed that adjustments brought about by progressive
education were superficial and perpetuated an unjust hierarchical social order.
Hurn (1985) further explained that in the wake of the 1970s, conservative ide-
ology took hold with its forceful call for a return to traditional, in loco parentis
authority, in which teachers’ legitimacy was based on their adult position in the
school. The conservatives blamed decreased achievement and increased deviance
in high schools on a collapse of authority (Adelson, 1981; Ravitch, 1985; Wynne,
1981). According to this view, the influence of progressive thinkers, large bureau-
cratic schools, and judicial interventions encouraged teachers to be flexible toward
diverse students rather than to uphold standards, to facilitate rather than use direct
learning, and to follow written procedures rather than traditional norms.
Hurn’s (1985) discussion of ideological debates over school authority is enlight-
ening in its identification of divergent belief systems that have shaped public dis-
course about education and have influenced, in complicated ways, classroom
authority relations (Pace, 2003b). His claims about the changes that took place in
high schools in response to the shift away from traditional and toward progressive
views of authority and the uncertainty that resulted are convincing; however, they
lack empirical evidence. His brief mention of Metz’s (1978) and Swidler’s (1979)
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school ethnographies also does not provide adequate substantiation of his argu-
ment. Apart from the dearth of empirical support, Hurn also did not provide enough
historical context especially for embattled political struggles over the authority of,
and control over, curricula.
Authority and Curriculum Ideologies: Kliebard’s History
Herbert Kliebard’s (1987) historical account of political struggles over curric-
ula between 1898 and 1958 fleshes out the historical context for understanding
classroom authority. Kliebard identified four major camps with divergent positions
on the proper curriculum for K-12 schools: humanist, developmentalist, social
meliorist, and social efficiency. Those in the humanist camp saw themselves as “the
guardians of an ancient tradition tied to the power of reason and the finest elements
of the Western cultural heritage” (p. 27). They represented the most ideologically
conservative position in education, with their staunch support of academic curric-
ula rooted in classic Western European languages, literature, humanities, science,
mathematics, and art. Those occupying the more liberal developmentalist camp
endorsed a more student-centered curriculum that is in harmony with children’s
cognitive stages, personal interests, and needs. Knowledge, they believed, should
unleash the “natural power” of each and every child (p. 28). The most politically
radical camps were those occupied by social meliorists, who viewed schools as
major if not primary sites for initiating social change and ending social injustice.
They were convinced that the power of curricular knowledge can, and should, be
used to realize revolutionary visions for society. Then there were those who
believed that schools should create a more efficient, smoothly running society.
They championed social efficiency through the development of a scientifically
constructed curriculum that functioned effectively in the preparation of children
for adult roles and occupations.
Kliebard (1987) did not explicitly discuss authority in his treatise on curricular
ideological camps; however, connections to Hurn’s (1985) discussion of ideolog-
ical positions on authority are easily made. The humanist model can be paired with
traditional authority, developmentalism with professional authority, and social
meliorism with radical views of authority. Kliebard’s discussion of social effi-
ciency points to a major gap in Hurn’s essay: Although Hurn suggested in his con-
clusion that sociologists of education should examine “the trend towards the
rationalization and bureaucratization of Western society” (p. 54), he did not dis-
cuss bureaucratic authority. Bureaucratic authority, based on legal-rational legiti-
macy, has had an increasingly major impact on schooling.
Kliebard’s (1987) work is especially enlightening for understanding how views
of authority are linked to positions on curricula and the ways in which these posi-
tions are ideologically and historically rooted. The implication is that different
understandings and practices of authority have been shaped for over a century by
conflicting ideological belief systems.
Radical Ideologies: Freire, Feminism, Poststructuralism
and Modernism, and Critical Theories
Radical ideological positions on education have also advocated for particular
orientations to authority. The work of Paulo Freire (1970, 1998; Freire, & Shor, 1987)
advocates pedagogy for liberation, in which classroom relations are equalized so
10
that teachers educate students and students educate teachers in mutual realizations
of social justice. Feminists such as Maher and Tetreault (1994) argued that teach-
ers should facilitate consciousness raising to heighten awareness of how patriar-
chal authority structures and sustains gender, racial, ethnic, class, and other social
inequalities. Ellsworth (1989) and Luke (1996) encouraged female teachers to
reclaim their professional authority while challenging patriarchal positions of
power. Noddings (1984, 1991) promoted an ethic of care, in which teachers and
students take responsibility for their relations with each other through acts of care
that foster intellectual growth and also address physical, emotional, and psycho-
logical needs. Contemporary poststructuralists drawing from the work of Foucault
(1977, 1979, 1980) contend that students are socialized into hierarchies of nor-
malization by teachers who use techniques of discipline, surveillance, and regula-
tion that “penetrate into the smallest details of everyday life” (Hall, 2002, p. 89).
Lather (1991) encouraged teachers to work with and in the postmodern to imple-
ment praxis-oriented emancipatory pedagogies in which they deconstruct class-
room authority to see how it is constituted and constituting. Reconstituted authority
relations should be participatory, dialogic, and pluralistic; antihierarchical; and
conducive for decentering the centers of hegemonic power and knowledge.
Critical theories have also taken root and are especially relevant for radical ide-
ological understandings of classroom authority because of how they have been
informing pedagogical practices intended to be socially and politically transfor-
mative. As Grande (2004) explained, critical theories and associated pedagogies
operate in the educational landscape as “a rhetoric and a social movement” with
implications for authority:
Critical theorists . . . position schools as “sites of struggle” where the broader
relations of power, domination, and authority are played out. In addition to
their analysis of schools, critical educators theorize the intersection of race,
class, gender, and sexuality as the fault lines of inequality. (p. 6)
Critical educators construct forms of pedagogical praxis in which they make
politically conscious attempts to emancipate students especially historically mar-
ginalized students of color, working- and lower-class students, girls and women,
and gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals. Although they certainly provide
powerful insights into the perpetuation and amelioration of educational inequali-
ties, their ideological positions as well as those in other camps are not immune to
critique, especially with regard to their stances on classroom authority.
Critiquing Ideology: Giroux’s Challenge
Although the above ideological positions are notably divergent, most of them, as
Giroux (1986) observed, lack careful theoretical consideration of what classroom
authority actually is or can possibly become. Giroux extracted and critiqued under-
lying conservative, liberal, and radical tenets that are especially pertinent to the
authority of teachers. Conservatives view teachers’ authority as legitimate as long
as it is used to transmit values and norms embedded in notions of family, patrio-
tism, duty, and other traditions. Such views “add up to a warmed-over dish of
Parsonian consensus and cultural reproduction” and a myopic vision of legitimate
teaching (p. 24). Liberals, basking in the idealism of progressive education, insist
that classroom authority relations should appeal to the lofty ethics, imperatives,
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and social values of democratic communities. But they do not look at the darker
side of how social and cultural forces give rise to educational injustices and
inequalities. Radicals are highly suspicious of authority (except their own) and
generally advocate an escape from it. They portray schools as “oppressive facto-
ries, prisons, or warehouses” and often associate teacher authority with the most
self-constraining forms of authoritarianism (p. 25). Their descriptions of school-
ing and teacher-student relations are either far too reactionary or woefully incom-
plete. All of these ideologies, Giroux argued, need to be more theoretically
grounded and concrete with regard to how teachers might actually exercise their
authority to better serve students’ educational interests:
Conservatives celebrate authority, linking it to popular expressions of every-
day life, but in doing so they express and support reactionary and undemoc-
ratic interests. On the other hand, radical educators tend to equate authority
with forms of domination or the loss of freedom and consequently fail to
develop a conceptual category for constructing a programmatic language of
hope and struggle. Liberals, in general, provide the most dialectical view of
authority but fail to apply it in a concrete way so as to interrogate the dynam-
ics of domination and freedom as they are expressed within the asymmetri-
cal relations of power and privilege that characterize various aspects of school
life. (pp. 26–27)
Giroux’s (1986) own recommendation was for public school teachers to
become transformative intellectuals who possess the emancipatory capacity to
engage in “a form of intellectual practice” that effectively transforms classroom
conventions that have silenced and disempowered them and their students (p. 29).
But he missed an even more critical theoretical point: He failed to recognize the
extent to which classroom authority is a social construction, negotiated by teach-
ers and students and shaped by myriad influences. Expecting K-12 teachers to
become transformative intellectuals, even if this were possible, does not take into
account other ideological forces acting on authority, especially those rooted in the
dominant national culture of social efficiency, which is replete with anti-intellectual
tendencies (Hofstadter, 1963; Page, 1991).
The Ideology of Social Efficiency

Although educational ideologies certainly have their attractions, the most pro-
gressive and radical ones have not had much of an impact on education, especially
in public K-12 schools. Most research on radicalized authority relations is written
by scholars who studied their own teaching practices. Additionally, ideological
writing on authority often neglects the tenacious grip that social efficiency ideol-
ogy has had on the policies that federal, state, and local governments have imposed
on public education. Callahan (1962) and Kliebard (1987) documented how the
social efficiency movement took firm hold in the 1920s in the wake of principles
of scientific management that essentially modeled schools after factories. Teachers
then and now are expected to exercise impersonal forms of bureaucratic authority
supported by rules, regulations, and assessments based on rational values.
Education scholars such as Grant (1981) have warned that the increasing rational-
istic and legalistic orientation of schools and society damages authority relation-
ships and the ethos of schools. Kliebard explained that political struggles have
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created ebbs and flows in the dominance of the social-efficiency camp. But it
regained primacy in policy making in the 1980s, when the National Commission
on Excellence in Education (1983) released an alarming report, A Nation at Risk,
about the weakened state of public education in the United States. Despite reform
movements working against the standardization of curricula and assessment and
other consequences of bureaucratization during the 1980s and 1990s, 20 years
later, standards-based reform has been instituted on a national level. Critic Deborah
Meier (2000) argued that standardization has a negative impact on authority:
By shifting the locus of authority to outside bodies, it undermines the capac-
ity of schools to instruct by example the qualities of mind that schools in a
democracy should be fostering in kids—responsibility for one’s own ideas,
tolerance for the ideas of others, and a capacity to negotiate differences.
Standardization instead turns teachers and parents into the local instruments
of externally imposed expert judgment. (p. 5)
Ideological discussions of authority in classrooms and schools reveal the con-
flicts that have pervaded public schooling in the United States. The problem with
these discussions is that they tend to lack theoretical and empirical grounding in
actual authority relations. The same can be said for much educational policy, which
often neglects theory, conceals ideological positions, and generally ignores the
empirical findings of qualitative researchers who have documented the everyday
dynamics of classroom authority relations (Metz, 2003). It is to this research that
we now turn.
Research on Classroom Authority
In the real world of classrooms, authority is enacted through ongoing negotia-
tions between teachers and students and often involves conflict that affects the bal-
ance of legitimacy and consent. Waller (1932/1961), Jackson (1968), and Metz
(1978) explained the perennial paradoxes in schooling that give rise to intractable
tensions in classroom authority relations. Teachers have to fulfill the instrumental
goal of maintaining order through the imposition of social control and encourage
voluntary student engagement in learning. For many K-12 teachers, control takes
precedence in part because their performance inside school buildings is often
judged in terms of their ability to sustain orderly classrooms (Jackson, 1968;
Leacock, 1969; Metz, 1990; Waller, 1932/1961). Qualitative studies show how
teachers attempt to resolve such paradoxical pressures through the negotiation of
various modes of authority.
Groundbreaking Ethnographies
Groundbreaking ethnographic investigations conducted in the 1960s and 1970s
greatly advanced empirical understandings of classroom authority and also
exposed the mounting challenges to authority in schools. In his classic study of life
in an elementary classroom, Philip Jackson (1968) showed how integral authority
is to the daily routines of classroom culture. He coined the term hidden curriculum to
characterize the unofficial three R’s—rules, routines, and regulations—constituting
the implicit lessons that shore up authority. From Jackson, we learn that although
the hidden curriculum does not necessarily further intellectual development, its
impact on socializing students to the norms, values, and purposes (moral order) of
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schooling is profound. We also learn that maintaining order is the top priority as
teachers respond not only to their own concerns but also to those of their superiors.
Jackson’s (1968) up-close examination emphasized the consistencies of class-
room life, but he did not take full account of the especially important fact that
teacher-student authority relations are highly negotiable social constructions that
shape life in classrooms. The generalizations that Jackson made do not always hold
in the midst of the myriad influences shaping these relations.
Metz (1978) emphasized this fact in her pioneering ethnographic study of two
desegregated junior high schools conducted in the late 1960s. She framed her
research in terms of social theories that define authority as a social relationship in
which some people are granted legitimacy as leaders, others accept more subordi-
nate roles, and everyone owes allegiance to a moral order. But, as Metz made clear,
there was major conflict over the negotiation of authority in the two schools, both
of which served a large cadre of students from White upper-middle-class families
and a population of poorer, mostly Black children. Although each school was “typ-
ical” in structure and curriculum, there was notable variation in authority relations
traced to influences both inside and outside classrooms.
Metz (1978) showed that inside influences included teachers’ own conceptions
of learning and teaching, the types of authority roles they enacted, and the
resources and strategies they used to gain control. They also included students’ ori-
entations to schooling, their academic abilities, and sociocultural characteristics,
especially their race and social class. Institutional influences included tracking,
faculty culture, administrative leadership, and school ethos. Local community and
national factors were vital. The schools were located in a university town at the
forefront of the social and political rebellions of the late 1960s, and these conflicts
were manifested in classroom authority relations.
Metz (1978) did generalize about the approaches of different teachers, which she
characterized as “incorporative” and “developmental.” Incorporative teachers
tended to be older and more conservative. They viewed the moral order as involv-
ing the transmission of standardized content consisting of tried-and-true knowledge,
skills, values, and norms. Some invoked the traditional model of in loco parentis
authority, in which they insisted that students obey simply because they were told
to obey. Others relied on legal-rational forms of authority, in which students were
expected to follow the orders of a boss. Developmental teachers were younger and
more liberal. They interpreted the moral order as the development of the whole
child. Their curriculum was open-ended rather than fixed, and they identified stu-
dents’ prior knowledge, experiences, and interests to make education more person-
ally relevant. They enacted the roles of facilitators and expert professionals and
responded to students’ challenges by explaining how their commands would help
them learn and realize their individual potential.
Although Jackson (1968) and Metz (1978) examined authority within the con-
fines of mainstream public schools, Ann Swidler (1979) studied alternative high
schools that deliberately eliminated formal authority: Group High, a free school
that enrolled mostly White, middle-class students, and Ethnic High, which served
racially diverse, low-income, and working-class students. Faculty members and
administrators in both schools embraced the progressive position that teacher dom-
ination and student subordination interfere with meaningful instruction and the
realization of a just democratic society. Rather than giving direct commands or
14
asserting professional expertise, teachers relied on their personal influence and
prestige, acknowledged their vulnerabilities, and used other appeals for coopera-
tion in the hopes of forging closer bonds with students. Although this trade-off
gave students more freedom to express themselves and participate in democratic
decision making, it also put teachers into highly tenuous situations. The result of
giving up authority, Swidler explained, “was to put a tremendous premium on a
teacher’s ability to make himself charming, interesting, or glamorous enough so
that intimacy would be an enticing reward” (p. 66). Although egalitarian relations
made the schools more comfortable for students, such relations incited resistance,
especially at Ethnic High, where students felt that their easygoing teachers were
not doing their jobs. They wanted teachers to exercise authority. Many teachers
ended up quitting out of sheer exhaustion.
These pioneering studies shed crucial light on variations in the character of rela-
tions between teachers and students, the ways these relations are negotiated, and
the powerful influences of internal and external factors. Metz’s (1978) and
Swidler’s (1979) studies are particularly important in their analytical applications
of social theory and recognition of political and ideological influences. They also
laid the empirical groundwork for exploring how paradoxical tensions of school-
ing shape classroom authority relations. However, they did not include case stud-
ies of individual classrooms. Although Metz captured the variations of authority
roles and relations that existed, she did not show how these types often become
blended in individual classrooms nor how the character of authority relations
within one classroom can fluctuate over time.
Studies of High Schools in the 1980s
Studies of high schools conducted in the 1980s vividly illustrated that most sec-
ondary school teachers resort to a number of strategies to resolve the demands of
educating diverse student bodies within the inhospitable, factory-like structures of
schools. Many of them win the cooperation of adolescent students with many dif-
ferent interests and needs through bargains, treaties, compromises, and other tac-
tics (Powell, Farrar, & Cohen, 1985; Sedlak, Wheeler, Pullin, & Cusick, 1986;
Sizer, 1984). Good grades are often exchanged for cooperative behavior, and coop-
eration is also gained by treating students as equals or friends or striking bargains
whereby teachers receive less grief if they ease their demands (Sedlak et al., 1986,
p. 106). Often, these tactics entail the lowering of academic standards, especially
as teachers feel pressured to accommodate and keep the peace with a racially,
socioeconomically, and academically heterogeneous clientele (Cusick, 1983).
Powell et al. (1985) emphasized the values of diversity and individualism that per-
vade the “shopping mall high school” and suggested that these values supersede
understandings of the common good.
Page’s (1991) analysis went further in explaining the cultural paradox of egali-
tarianism in service to the common good, in which students are to be treated the same,
and, on the other hand, individualism, in which students are to be treated differently
according to their different needs. This contradictory imperative is especially prob-
lematic in tracking students into differentiated courses on the basis of their academic
abilities and/or likely vocational destinations. Oakes (1985) effectively argued that
tracking resulted in perpetuating social and economic inequalities and undercutting
15
Pace & Hemmings
egalitarian education, in part because of differences in authority relations in low-track
compared with high-track classes.
A number of researchers have documented differences in the quality of curric-
ular knowledge, instructional approaches, and classroom dynamics between high-
and low-track classes (Metz, 1978; Oakes, 1985; Oakes et al., 1992; Page, 1987,
1991). Several have examined authority relationships, especially in low-track
classes, in which tensions are especially acute when there is a disproportionately
high representation of lower income and/or minority students (Hargreaves, 1967;
Keddie, 1971; Lacey, 1970; Metz, 1978; Oakes, 1985).
In an ethnographic study conducted in high school social studies classes, Linda
McNeil (1981, 1983, 1986) analyzed the dynamic created by teachers faced with
bureaucratic mandates such as heterogeneous classes. Teachers engaged in “defen-
sive teaching”; that is, they watered down curricula into “simplistic . . . informa-
tion that required no reading or writing by the students, little or no student
discussion, and very little use of the school’s resources” (McNeil, 1983,
pp. 115–116). Students encountered minimalist teaching, and they responded with
minimal individual effort. Additionally, although students were outwardly com-
pliant to get competitive grades, inwardly, they resisted the knowledge delivered
by teachers. Teachers perceived students’ passivity as apathy requiring greater
control, and a vicious cycle of defensive teaching and students’ internalized resis-
tance undercut authority and learning.
In a more optimistic vein, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot’s (1983) study of six good
high schools showed how a school culture with certain qualities, including respect
and autonomy for teachers and caring along with high expectations for students,
fosters positive and productive teacher-student authority relations. Teachers who
are experts in their subject areas and in pedagogy and who are committed to work-
ing with youth are key to educative enactments of authority, but the support they
get from the school environment and leadership also is essential.
Secondary school studies portrayed the ways teachers and students manage their
relationships with each other and with subject matter as they confront the paradox-
ical demands of schooling. These studies profoundly resonate with the experiences
of teachers and students to this day. However, most did not use conceptualizations
of authority in their analyses and thereby neglected the fundamental role that author-
ity and legitimacy play and ways in which they are constructed and undermined in
classrooms. An important exception is Gerald Grant’s (1988) study of a desegre-
gated high school, in which he, like Metz (1978), discussed the layers of nested con-
texts, such as school ethos, educational policy, and societal racial dynamics, that
unsettle beliefs about legitimacy, the moral order, and authority relations between
teachers and students. Aside from the work of Grant and Lightfoot, this body of
research on high schools implies that there is no moral order that justifies the
processes, relationships, and content of schooling. This implication makes tenuous
the connection between schooling and democracy, or the greater good.
Research on the Challenges of Diversity
In addition to school factors, teachers’ authority relations with students are
influenced by sociocultural factors that extend well beyond the classroom. There
was a shift among many qualitative researchers in the late 1970s away from
16
inquiries that delved into authority and other features of classroom life toward
explorations of educational inequities experienced by low-income and working-
class children and youth, ethnic minorities, girls and women, and other historically
marginalized groups. Many scholars became especially concerned with how and
why members of these groups appeared to be resisting mainstream (White, middle-
class) public schooling. They tended to make a conceptual distinction between stu-
dent resistance and accommodation and portrayed historically marginalized
students as especially prone to resist schooling through active disruptions, passive
withdrawal, and/or by purposely “learning how not to learn” what is intentionally
taught (McDermott, 1974).
But rather than focusing on the intricate dynamics of teacher-student relations,
many of these scholars in their attempts to explain low achievement due to stu-
dents’ resistance to schooling concentrated on the unequal structure of social strat-
ification, historical racial discrimination, cultural domination, and other societal,
cultural, and institutional forces. A number of studies in the late 1970s and the
1980s focused on social class and were heavily influenced by neo-Marxist theory
and ideology. Paul Willis (1977) described the resistance of working-class “lads”
in an English high school who refused to cooperate with and legitimize the mid-
dle-class competitive system of schooling. Instead, they created a subculture that
reflected the macho, shop floor values of their manual-laborer fathers and ulti-
mately contributed to the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities. Anyon
(1983), in her research on fifth grade classes in schools that ranged in socioeco-
nomic status, found that teachers in the working-class school used an authoritar-
ian approach and delivered a rote curriculum. In turn, students adopted an
oppositional stance to schooling. Other studies support the conclusion that conflict
between working-class students and the middle-class institution of schooling is
marked by student resistance that creates trouble for teachers but ultimately dis-
empowers the students because the status quo of social inequality is perpetuated
(Brantlinger, 1993; MacLeod, 1987; Willis, 1977).
Related explanations appear in studies on race, ethnicity, and gender. John
Ogbu (1974, 1978, 1987, 1991, 2003), in his well-known cultural ecological the-
ory, considered student resistance and a “low-effort syndrome” among Black stu-
dents and members of other involuntary minority groups as a collective
oppositional response to a long history of White discrimination. Fordham (1996),
with reference to Ogbu’s theory, contended that the cultural expressions of Black
high school students are reactions to the social burdens of acting White. Her work
has engendered an “acting White hypothesis” that posits that Black students are
prone to resist White schooling as expressions of community-based collective
oppositional culture toward White domination. Ogbu (2003) acknowledged that
community forces do not offer a complete explanation for the persistence of Black-
White achievement gaps. But, as Horvat and O’Connor (2006) observed, the act-
ing White hypothesis has taken on a life of its own as an overriding, overly
deterministic explanation. The hypothesis is compelling, but it does not adequately
contend with the fact that the African American experience is heterogeneous and
that the “specifics of social context” in communities, schools, and classrooms give
rise to wide variations in Black students’ adaptations and, for that matter, teachers’
adjustments in the classroom (Horvat & O’Connor, 2006, p. 14).
17
Pace & Hemmings
Sandy Grande (2004), a Quechua scholar who has infused critical theory and
pedagogical practices into a “Red pedagogy” for indigenous Native American stu-
dents, agrees that educators must move beyond simple cultural constructions and
analyses. Teachers who seek to empower Native Americans need to engage stu-
dents in “self-conscious traditionalism” that imports the language and visions of
ancestors to the concerns of the present (p. 169). Grande implies that such tradi-
tions should be absorbed into the ways in which teachers exercise their authority.
Peter Murrell (2001) made a similar case for teachers working in urban schools
serving Black students and other marginalized groups. Effective educators in his
view are “community teachers” who possess contextualized knowledge about their
students’ cultures, communities, and identities and draw on this knowledge to cre-
ate teaching practices that are effective in diverse classroom settings (p. 52).
Although these scholars recognize the importance of context and the instruc-
tional value of tapping into local knowledge, they do not go far enough to explain
and address the enormous difficulties many teachers have with establishing legit-
imacy and culturally responsive practice in classrooms serving ethnic minority stu-
dents. Educational anthropologists for decades have documented these difficulties,
especially in classrooms in which misunderstandings or conflicts abound over
what constitutes appropriate behavior (Ballenger, 1992; D’Amato, 1993; Erickson,
1987; Heath, 1983; McDermott, 1977; Philips, 1982; Vogt, Jordan, & Tharp,
1993). These studies bear critical implications for the importance and difficulty in
enacting shared conceptions of moral authority.
Among the earliest contributors to this line of inquiry was Harry Wolcott
(1974), who recognized public schooling as a process in which children, regard-
less of their ethnic backgrounds, are assimilated into mainstream Anglo-European
culture. He explained how the “the condition of [mainstream] cultural dominance”
in classrooms can “breed antagonism” between teachers and ethnic minority
groups to the point at which teachers are ascribed the role of enemy (p. 412).
Antagonisms are especially volatile when teachers impose values and norms that
are presumed to be superior to those constituting students’ natal ethnic cultures
(Erickson, 1987; Fordham, 1996). Valenzuela’s (1999) more recent notion of “sub-
tractive schooling” is based on her observation that schools reinforce mainstream
cultural domination through the rejection of other cultures and teachers’ low
expectations and a lack of care for ethnic minority youth. Subtractive schooling
contributes to students’ profound feeling of alienation and fuels resistance.
Another area of pertinent study is gender. Much of the research on gender has
been done by feminists focusing on the schooling experiences of girls and young
women. Some posit that girls’ self-concepts and willingness to compete academi-
cally, as well as the ways they are treated in school, are influenced by norms that
can either encourage or impede their engagement in learning and attachment to
schooling (Fuller, 1980; Kessler, Ashenden, Connell, & Dowsett, 1985). In the
“patriarchal gender regime” of schools, girls are expected to be docile and are often
silenced by male-dominated classroom social interactions and methods of instruc-
tion (Kessler et al., 1985, p. 43). But some girls stage overt resistance, like the
“burnouts” in Lesko’s (1988a, 1988b) study of a Catholic high school. These girls
purposely resisted the patriarchal, self-restrictive images of the “good” girl pro-
moted in schools by talking back to school authorities, using dirty language, and
18
donning provocative dress and outrageous makeup and hairstyles. Teachers in
these schools were at a loss as to how to handle such hard “bad” girls.
Although these studies certainly shed light on the sociocultural catalysts for
resistance among historically marginalized students, most did not go far enough in
recognizing the complexities and give-and-take flexibility of everyday teacher-student
authority relations. Closer scrutiny of classroom life indicates that students’ behav-
ior is not easily reduced to bifurcated choices between resistance or accommoda-
tion. “Rather,” as Levinson (2001) observed, “student [strategies] range through
multiple, shifting positions and ongoing trajectories” (p. 308).
Contemporary researchers, especially those embracing poststructural perspec-
tives, are expanding on the idea that students’ orientations toward schooling are
multifaceted and fluid. Davidson (1996), in her research on high school students’
cultural productions, referenced the theoretical work of Foucault as she explained
how Chicano students in a California high school expressed fragmented identities
and engaged in classroom activities in ways that changed from one context to
another and were shaped by school factors such as tracking, disciplinary policies,
and teachers. Students were constantly veering between normalizing and ethnic,
racial, class, and gender discourses and identities that caused them to be in oppo-
sition to, in harmony with, and/or in constructive play with teachers’ expectations.
Teachers were constantly trying to make adjustments to what students said and did.
Qualitative studies addressing sociocultural diversity, inequality, and conflict
in classrooms have made critical contributions; however, a lack of explicit atten-
tion to authority relations and links to social theory and ideology points to missed
opportunities and a need for new, more integrative inquiries.
Contemporary Research on Authority
Contemporary qualitative inquiry on classroom authority has been revitalized
by our work and that of other scholars (Bixby, 2006; Hemmings, 2003; Mullooly &
Varenne, 2006; Pace 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2006; Pace & Hemmings, 2006; Rosenblum,
2006; Wills, 2006). This research includes case studies that illustrate the socially
constructed nature of authority by portraying moment-to-moment interactions that
constitute classroom relations and by tracing their connections to local and larger
influences. For example, Pace (2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2006) studied an English
teacher and a social studies teacher in the same high school. She showed how the
overt exercise and questioning of authority so prominent in Metz’s (1978) study
gave way to indirect assertions and subtler challenges. Rather than issuing direct
commands or imposing punitive sanctions for disruptive behavior, the teachers
used a broad array of strategies, such as politeness, humor, and grade inflation, to
generate a semblance of cooperation. Although these strategies pushed tensions
beneath the surface, they came at a cost, because classroom relations were less
characterized by clearly defined positions of authority on the basis of legitimate
educational purposes and more constituted by ambiguous roles and goals blurred
by uncertain standards. Ambiguity was further exacerbated by diminished empha-
sis on serious intellectual engagement and the use of politeness and entertainment
to ensure social control.
Although the teachers in Pace’s (2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2006) study generally com-
promised with students, there were differences between track levels. Ambiguity of
teachers’ expectations was heightened in low-track classes, whereas grade-conscious
19
Pace & Hemmings
students in high-track classes were more willing to follow directives. The dynamic
character of authority relations across classes was shaped by interrelated factors, such
as the nature of curricula and pedagogy, student demographics (including race and
gender), teachers’ strategies, and the paradoxically egalitarian yet individualistically
competitive culture of the school and society.
In research carried out in urban public high schools Hemmings (2003) docu-
mented what can be characterized as a crisis of respect for authority. There were
fierce battles for respect in classrooms fought by teachers and students in defense
of the dominant educational regime and control over the daily regimen of peda-
gogical practice. Students also fought for respect in corridors, where they maneu-
vered between the opposing pressures of mainstream respectability and streetwise
reputation. Throughout it all, there was a lack of understanding of, and willingness
to grapple with, the competing discourses of respect that were inciting school
actors to engage in losing battles for, and against, authority.
Other contemporary scholars have also examined classroom authority across a
range of educational contexts. Wills (2006) explored the thorny educational dilem-
mas that state-mandated testing has created for teachers. He documented how a
fourth grade teacher in a school that promoted a moral order of care managed to
adopt a form of positive authority that allowed her to juggle the demands of state
testing, which entailed coverage of the curriculum, with the goal of fostering mean-
ingful learning through knowledge production. Bixby (2006) showed how detrack-
ing motivated by egalitarian impulses can be undermined by teachers’ reliance on
subject matter expertise and resistance to addressing the needs of diverse learners.
Rosenblum (2006) revealed the different strategies used by college teachers to han-
dle the incessant demands of students who want standards adjusted so they can suc-
ceed while juggling life circumstances. And Mullooly and Varenne (2006), against
the backdrop of Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) model of pedagogical authority,
explained how playfulness among Mexican immigrant middle school students
highlights the indeterminacy and unpredictability of authority.
Other scholars have considered the elements of power and morality in authority
relations. Buzzelli and Johnston (2002) conceptualized authority as teachers’ pos-
session of the knowledge students need to prosper as individuals and also the power
necessary to direct classroom events. They argued that the specific exercise of
teachers’ power must take the existence of conflicting moral agendas into account.
For example, teachers who confront the paradox of regulating students’ behavior
and nurturing students’ voices may use forms of “soft power” to reconcile disparate
goals (Barber, 1995, cited in Buzzelli & Johnston, 2002). These teachers become
politically conscious moral agents who effectively wield their authority in the face
of tensions between the values of individual liberty and community well-being.
Oyler (1996) investigated how a first grade teacher forged resolution by shar-
ing authority with students. The teacher followed rather than controlled students’
initiations in book discussions and other classroom activities. Although other
teachers would have treated such initiations as digressions from educational goals,
the progressive first grade teacher saw them as positive ways for children to help
direct the process and content of lessons. Students, Oyler claimed, were able to
bring their knowledge to bear in ways that challenged the authority of texts and
occasionally that of their teacher. Instead of undermining teacher’s authority, she
contended that the sharing of authority actually strengthened it.
20
Both Buzzelli and Johnston (2002) and Oyler (1996) promoted an ideologically
progressive approach to the resolution of the tension between order and engage-
ment. However, their conceptualizations of authority need fuller theorizing, and
their conclusions are not generalizable, because they are based on data gathered in
elementary classrooms, in which young children are developmentally predisposed
to go along with adults. As other research indicates, juggling the goals of order and
engagement is far more difficult in middle and high school settings, where students
are older and more inclined to challenge adult authority. Adolescent students are at
a stage in life at which they shift their allegiances from adult authority figures to age
mates. They are much more likely than younger children to mount individual and
collective resistance to teachers’ authority (Bidwell, 1970; D’Amato, 1993).
Qualitative research has been essential to understanding the complex and
dynamic social constructions that constitute these authority relationships. These
recent studies bode well for the future of qualitative research on classroom author-
ity. Many more investigations are needed to expand on and update prior research.
The general lack of theoretical, ideological, and empirical understanding of author-
ity relations in the larger more consequential realm of educational policy and other
lines of school-based inquiry remains problematic and potentially debilitating for
both teachers and students. It is, we argue, imperative that classroom authority and
the many factors that shape it in different settings be explicitly considered and
investigated to inform practice and policy.
Conclusions and New Directions for Research
Classroom authority relations are fundamental to the success of formal educa-
tional endeavors. And yet, conceptions and enactments of these relations have been
poorly understood and are underresearched, especially in the contexts of K-12 pub-
lic schools. To generate better understandings, we have reviewed and critiqued
scholarship on social theories, educational ideologies, and empirical qualitative
research. It is our hope that such understandings will lead to more informative per-
spectives on, and more educationally beneficial renditions of, classroom authority.
The general understanding we have derived from social theory is that the legit-
imacy of teachers as authority figures is not something that can be assumed but
rather is granted during the course of ongoing interactions with students.
Classroom authority is, above all else, a social construction that is built, taken
apart, and rebuilt by teachers and students. These relations function in a variety of
ways and to varying degrees in the service of a moral order that may be composed
of shared norms, values, and purposes but more often than not is complicated by
competing and contradictory values.
Such theoretical insights should be but often are not considered in educational ide-
ologies that have shaped academic content and processes (Kliebard, 1987). The lega-
cies of these ideologies continue to influence educational politics and policies in ways
that have had a notable impact on K-12 teachers and students. Conservatives are
adamant that teachers exercise their authority in a manner that ensures the transmission
of Western academic knowledge and common American values. Liberals gravitate
toward visions of progressive education in which teachers and students share author-
ity to realize individual potential and build more just, democratic communities.
Radicals under the influence of neo-Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist or modernist,
and critical theoretical views are highly critical of authority figures and hierarchies
21
Pace & Hemmings
dominated by privileged groups. They promote changes in classroom relations to trans-
form oppressive social systems and empower marginalized students. Although these
ideologies have been hotly debated, especially in academe, they have been trumped by
the ideology of bureaucratic social efficiency infused into national, state, and local edu-
cational policies and reform movements. Although standardized testing and other prod-
ucts of social efficiency have had profound and sometimes unintended effects on
teacher-student relations, the consequences of this ideology and, for that matter, other
ideologies are often overlooked or obscured to the point at which their actual impact
on classroom teaching and learning is hidden and/or ignored. That is why research con-
ducted in classroom settings that investigates the impact of policy, particularly in the
wake of the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, is so vital.
Groundbreaking qualitative studies in the 1960s and 1970s illuminated the
highly complex, socially constructed nature of teacher-student authority relations.
Other research revealed the existence of tensions between teachers and students
underscored by perennial paradoxes emanating from the tension between order and
engagement and the imperatives of egalitarianism and individualism. By far the
most perplexing challenges for teachers are those related to diversity. Studies car-
ried out in schools serving historically marginalized students have left little doubt
that larger social and cultural forces have had an enormous effect on classroom
relations. Although researchers have focused attention on how social inequalities,
cultural domination, and other factors incite student resistance, they often ignore
the more subtle intricacies and dynamics of authority relations.
Fortunately, contemporary research on classroom authority is taking theory and
the impact of ideology and contextual factors into account. But having a good con-
ceptual and realistic grasp of classroom authority continues to elude most educational
policy makers and researchers. The problems that plague public education will never
be resolved until theorists, ideologues, and researchers acknowledge the fact that a
good education simply is not possible without classroom authority relations that pro-
mote learning. The most promising possibilities depend on theoretical elaborations
of authority, the examination of ideologies that underlie common sense understand-
ings, and the investigation of what really happens inside classrooms as participants
interpret and manage the forces that shape teacher-student relations.
Note
1
We acknowledge that many more writings on authority could be included in our
review, notably philosophical discussions of authority. We decided to leave out this
body of work in an effort to maintain focus; however, these discussions point to the
importance, complexity, and richness of the topic (see Nyberg & Farber, 1986).
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Authors
JUDITH L. PACE is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of
San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117; e-mail pace@usfca.edu.
Her research specialization is classroom relations, curriculum, and pedagogy within the
sociocultural contexts of schooling. In particular, she examines issues related to author-
ity, academic engagement, and democratic citizenship education.
ANNETTE HEMMINGS received her PhD in educational policy studies from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1992. She is currently a professor of educational
studies at the University of Cincinnati, Educational Studies and Leadership, 7150D
Edwards 1, P. O. Box 210049, Cincinnati, OH 45221-004; e-mail: annette.hemmings
@uc.edu. She teaches graduate courses on qualitative research methods, social theories
in education, and other topics. She is a school ethnographer who has conducted research
in public high schools on teachers’ work lives, high-achieving Black students, youth cul-
ture of hostility, adolescent coming-of-age processes, and classroom authority.
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Review of Educational Research

March 2007, Vol. 77, No. 1, pp. 4–27

Understanding Authority in Classrooms:

Authority is a fundamental, problematic, and poorly understood component

KEYWORDS: classroom authority, classroom relations.

Types of Authority: Contributions From Weber and Durkheim

Debates Over School Authority From the 1960s

The Ideology of Social Efficiency

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