The enactment of power within ‘didactical contracts’ of classroom teaching
2015 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
This paper reports on an empirical exploration of the constitution of power and knowledge in science and technology classrooms. A deepened examination of the teaching of science and technology is partly motivated by these subjects high status in society, how they are portrayed as crucial both for the individual, in order to function in an increasingly technologically advanced society, and for the society at large, while finding it increasingly difficult to attract interest among the youth . We are interested in how (instances of) teacher-student interaction can be understood as simultaneously contributing to meaning making and producing power relations. The empirical design is based on a purposive sampling of classrooms. The paper draws on three video recorded case studies of physics and technology teaching, with students in the ages 14-17. The analysis is focused on how actions initiated by the teachers (analysed in terms of epistemological moves (Lidar et al. 2006)) and the responses to these actions are functional in constituting a ‘didactical contract’ (Brousseau & Warfield 1999). In our paper we contrast the didactical contracts for the three studied classrooms, and discuss how power relations must be understood as integral to these contracts. Furthermore, a key concern in the analysis is to take the situatedness of the studied classroom seriously, by theoretically and empirically acknowledging that these classrooms are by no means isolated from surrounding structural factors (e.g. gendered disciplinary and societal norms). How to address this concern is something we are keen to discuss during the conference.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2015.
Keywords [en]
technology education, science education, class-room study, power relations, didactical contract
National Category
Educational Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-106837OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-106837DiVA, id: diva2:844957
Conference
10th Biennial Conference of the Gender and Education Association: Feminisms, Power and Pedagogy, University of Roehampton 24-26 June 2015
Funder
Swedish Research Council2015-08-102015-08-102018-06-07Bibliographically approved