Fear-Based Control
There are different ways in which a teacher can exert control over the classroom: a fear-based control and one based on mutual trust. The former is what may be thought of as the historical stereotype of complete teacher control, in which all students behave within very rigid boundaries and follow almost scripted interactions for classroom communication and participation. Many teachers consider this an ideal environment due to their complete control over the students’ behavior – a “fixation with behavior management and social control… outweighs and overrides all other priorities and goals” (Noguera, 342). Though a measure of self-control and understanding of social protocol is necessary for success in greater society, the completely-controlled fear-based classroom functions on the basis of precisely-followed (often arbitrary) procedures obeyed to avoid punishment and embarrassment, further linking the connection to prisons.
If the teacher controls the classroom by ruling with fear, the students may begin to understand their school environment as one where the teacher does not care about the students’ well-being or creative academic exploration, but rather values subservient behavior and non-divergent answers. This atmosphere displays a lack of confidence in students that can cause them to act out. Shieh writes through Noguera, Lyons and Drew how students can lose their ability to be moral agents by punishing them for non-existing crimes, installing armed guards and metal detectors. “[Schools] ‘construct students as either potential victims in need of protection or perpetrators - and both identities, importantly, are premised on renouncing agency’. And true to the difficulty of rehabilitation in prison, there is a strong evidence these schools’ processes at times foster the very crimes they seek to prevent” (29). The espousal of this hard prison atmosphere alienates and antagonizes students, especially those that have difficulty conforming to school expectations. The hidden curriculum of teaching students how they are “supposed” to interact with the world and conform within its boundaries becomes the major goal of this education, rather than fostering innovative and individualistic thinking.
Reciprocal Classroom Control
However, it is possible for a teacher to maintain classroom control that is not based on fear, inflexibility, and punishment. In a classroom committed to mutual trust, the teacher acts as a facilitator rather than a prison warden, generating reciprocal classroom control. In this classroom, students are given a measure of control and voice, reducing alienation and affirming their agency. By including students in the direction of the classroom willingly (as opposed to begrudgingly or through their own imposed forces), students are validated as non-passive members of the school. As Shieh writes, “as long as students remain the objects of education, they cannot claim agency – which would seem a necessary component of self-transformation” (22). This shared control can only be promoted through an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. In this way, students and teachers can feel that they are working with each other in their own best interests, trusting that the control given to one other will be used to promote educational growth and exploration.
Facilitators in the Classroom
As facilitators, teachers engaging in reciprocal classroom control draw from aspects of constructivist philosophy, where “a premium is placed on creating unique rather than uniform understandings and developing a powerful sense of agency in learners,” (Windschitl 85). Teachers relinquish their control over “correct” and “incorrect” results allowing for multiple perspectives in the classroom. As Bowman (2005) notes, “curricula at all levels are increasingly designed to eliminate the possibility of failure through prediction, control, and precision. The possibility that the world loses its depth along with its recalcitrance is not seen as a serious consideration…” (3). The positive inclusion of failure in the classroom supports exploration and creativity on the students’ part as well as reaffirming the importance of their voice the classroom. Although both fear-based control and reciprocal classroom control both assert the teacher in a leadership role, the openness and inclusion of reciprocal classroom control directly contradicts the fear-based control ideal of students’ conformity to the “one correct” way of thinking and acting.
Because of the various manifestations of the aforementioned chaotic and controlled classrooms, it is important to note that they are not mutually exclusive opposites, but rather exist on a continuum of student and teacher control. In Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Freire espouses the belief that “both the authoritarian teacher who suffocates the natural curiosity and freedom of the student as well as the teacher who imposes no standards at all are equally disrespectful of an essential characteristic of our humanness, namely, our radical (and assumed) unfinishedness,” (59). By reciprocally sharing control of the classroom, teachers remain the guiding authority while empowering students to exercise their “natural curiosity and freedom.”