The Dialectic of Control in the Classroom: Agency and Exercise of Power Between Teachers and “Pre-adolescent” Students

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze the interactions of “pre-adolescent” students in the classroom through relationships sustained by structure, agency, and power exercises based on Anthony Giddens’ Theory of Structuring.¹ A qualitative research approach was used with the characteristic of a case study in a municipal public school in the city of Itabira (MG), Brazil. As procedures for recording the evidence, we used the application of a questionnaire, observation of the classroom and listening to students and teachers in a class of the sixth year of elementary school II during the 2017 school year. The results indicated that the vision of “pre-adolescence” marked by biological and psychological changes remains institutionalized for school professionals. The students demonstrated the need for the teacher to use his teaching authority to set limits in the classroom, however, this exercise of agency-power by the teacher must be negotiated and mediated by the participation of “pre-adolescents.” In view of this procedural context, “pre-adolescent” students cannot be held responsible for the instability of the interactive process in the classroom if the historical and social context through which these students pass is not considered in comparison to the institutionalized characteristics solidified through the process, time, and space by the school and/or some of its representatives (teachers).

Citation

Isidório, M.S. and Reis, M. (2023), "The Dialectic of Control in the Classroom: Agency and Exercise of Power Between Teachers and “Pre-adolescent” Students", Isidório, M.S. and Bass, L.E. (Ed.) The Social Construction of Adolescence in Contemporaneity (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Vol. 31), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 123-146. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1537-466120230000031009