Teaching and Learning Leadership

But how can adult literacy education envision, let alone support students "granting" authority to teachers? This would involve teachers learning new ways of being and students exercising power, which would generate a major shift from the cemented position of teacher as knower with power and authority to teacher as learner. This cemented position is reflected in much of the literature and research in education, where, when the focus is on power and authority, it refers to teacher power and authority. When the focus is on learning, it refers to student learning. Fortunately, the work of Norton (1992; 2001b; 2001c) and Horsman (2001a) opens up the research process and the literacy education process to include teacher/researcher learning and student exercise of power. Their work shares the struggles of literacy teachers and facilitators in the process of shifting power dynamics amongst learners and teachers. Through her descriptions of power dynamics within specific literacy projects, Horsman hopes to trigger "rethinking the problems of learner leadership and the complex conflicts that arise during attempts, in the literacy movement in Canada, to support learners taking substantial power and control" (Horsman 2001:77). Norton (2001b) describes her experiences working to share power and "devolve" power during a project with learners.

Other research in practice studies discuss shifting power relations through learner leadership and challenge conventional ideas about teacher-learner roles in educational settings (Campbell 1996; Norton and Malicky 2000). These studies look at participatory practices that contribute to both the transformation and reproduction of power relationships in adult literacy education. Pat Campbell's study raises questions about social identity and privilege in relation to the fears and reluctance of literacy students to speak out and take part in community decisionmaking. In a later work, she argues that the limitations within participatory practices that promote student leadership and more dialectical processes are related to a product-oriented discourse within the field (Campbell 2001). Adult literacy programs, projects and proposals that receive recognition and government funding are those that are time bound and tied to products and results. She recommends that teachers develop mentoring relationships with students and take responsibility to teach and demystify facilitation skills and techniques.

These studies point to an explicit acknowledgment of power through learning and teaching leadership. Similarly, Briskin (1990), a feminist educator, also argues the need to name power relations of the classroom rather than masking them. She suggests this is done through teaching leadership rather than assuming it and argues that teaching leadership seeks to "equip students to use power (for those unused to it), to acknowledge their power (for those to whom power has accrued by virtue of their class, race, or gender) and to develop an appreciation of collective power" (451).

Teaching and learning leadership works to disrupt the deficiency perspective and can help keep the caregiving approach at bay through avoiding the use of helping as a way of addressing individuals' needs and deficiencies. Instead, teaching leadership works with the notion of "change that focuses on assuring individuals and communities of their rights and responsibilities" (Kreisberg 1992:19).