Teacher as Participant: Reconfiguring Authority as a Mode of Resistance

As educators, we need operational tools to implement change in the everyday practice of teaching, learning, and being. As the system of higher education perpetuates inequality, there is a constant need to redesign our classroom practices through the framework of critical pedagogy.

This paper presents a series of approaches, which encourage small moments of change and agency at the classroom level and aim to push against those forces that build systems of inequity. Rather than large, radical, systemic change, which seems overwhelming, these moment by moment approaches hand power back to the teacher and to the student: the classroom is acknowledged an act of resistance. This paper presents these approaches as achievable micro-strategies and discusses the idea of the “teacher as participant”. The teacher recognizes their authority in the classroom and enacts a reflexive practice. The teacher as participant encourages a fluid approach to authority, questioning and negotiating the role of the teacher in response to their students and their roles, thereby framing and reframing classroom culture.