Teachers, Discourses, and Authority in the Postmodern Composition Classroom

By Xin Liu Gale

Subjects: English
Paperback : 9780791427668, 201 pages, January 1996
Hardcover : 9780791427651, 201 pages, January 1996

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Table of contents

Foreword by Gary A. Olson

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1:  Introduction

Chapter 2:  The New Paradigm and the Questioning of the Traditional Teacher's Authority

Bourdieu and Passeron's Theory of the Traditional Teacher's Authority

The Changing Classroom and the Questioning of the Traditional Teacher's Authority

A Perplexing Dimension of the Teacher's Authority

Chapter 3:  Reconsidering the Teacher's Authority

The Institutional Authority as Necessary Evil

The Ambiguity of Authority of Expertise and Personal Authority

Chapter 4:  Rethinking the Relationship of Discourses In the Classroom

Discourse as the Site of Struggle

Rorty's Notion of Normal and Abnormal Discourse

Responsive Abnormal Discourse and Nonresponsive Abnormal Discourse

Differences Between Responsive Abnormal Discourse and Nonresponsive Abnormal Discourse

Reconceiving the Discourse Relationships in the Classroom

Chapter 5:  Discourse as Enabling Constraints

Lena's Story as an Indication of the Need for Primary Interaction in the Writing Class

Changing the "Stabilized Social Audience" Through Primary Interaction

Stories about "Outsiders": Critical Consciousness versus Critical Literacy

The Two-Level Interaction as Means to Critical Literacy

Chapter 6:  Edifying Teachers as Enabling Constraints

The Concept of the Edifying Teacher

Edifying Teachers' Edifying Roles

The Nurturing Mother and the Edifying Teacher

The Emancipator and the Edifying Teacher

The Mediator and the Edifying Teacher

Edifying Teachers as Enabling Constraints

Conclusion, or a New Beginning

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Examines the teacher’s role and the teacher’s authority in postmodern academic settings.

Description

This book is a sophisticated analysis of the teacher's role and authority in postmodern academic settings. Xin Liu Gale argues that the teacher's authority is inevitable and indispensable in effective teaching, and that, furthermore, it is necessary for "symbolic imposition." The author insists that teachers and scholars should explore how the teacher's authority functions in the pedagogic context and how it can help students develop critical literacy.

Influenced by the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron, Paulo Freire, Richard Rorty, and various poststructuralist theorists, Gale investigates the complex relationships among the teacher's and the institution's authority, the teacher's discourse(s) and social and pedagogic roles, and students' discourse(s) and diverse backgrounds. She then proposes a two-level interactional model of teaching that is based on a new discourse relationship characterized by the "edifying" role of the teacher.

Xin Liu Gale is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

Reviews

"One of the interesting and revealing features ofTeachers, Discourses, and Authority in the Postmodern Composition Classroom is that the author uses her personal experience as an English teacher in China and her extensive knowledge of educational movements during the Cultural Revolution to support her theoretical philosophical discussions. This personal dimension adds flesh and blood to an already insightful, intelligent, and revealing analysis. The work represents composition scholarship at its most mature and sophisticated." — Gary A. Olson, From the Foreword