Should Students Share The Power

What happens when teachers share power with students? In this profound book, Ira Shor—the inventor of critical pedagogy in the United States—relates the story of an experiment that nearly went out of control. Shor provides the reader with a reenactment of one semester that shows what really can happen when one applies the theory and democratizes the classroom. This is the story of one class in which Shor tried to fully share with his students control of the curriculum and of the classroom. After twenty years of practicing critical teaching, he unexpectedly found himself faced with a student uprising that threatened the very possibility of learning. How Shor resolves these problems, while remaining true to his commitment to power-sharing and radical pedagogy, is the crux of the book. Unconventional in both form and substance, this deeply personal work weaves together student voices and thick descriptions of classroom experience with pedagogical theory to illuminate the power relations that must be negotiated if true learning is to take place.

As scholars and administrators have sharpened their focus on higher education beyond trends in access and graduation rates for underrepresented college students, there are growing calls for understanding the experiential dimensions of college life. This contributed book explores what actually happens on campus as students from an increasingly wide range of backgrounds enroll and share space. Chapter authors investigate how students of differing socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and racial/ethnic groups navigate academic institutions alongside each other. Rather than treat diversity as mere difference, this volume provides dynamic analyses of how students come to experience both power and marginality in their campus lives. Each chapter comprises an empirical qualitative study from scholars engaged in cutting-edge research about campus life. This exciting book provides administrators and faculty new ways to think about students’ vulnerabilities and strengths.

Shared Governance begins with the premise that today’s higher education governance practices have lost their focus and vitality. By re-examining the original suppositions of shared governance, along with an infusion of seminal democratic values and principles, a contemporary model is envisioned. From historical perspectives on shared governance, the book then takes a view of current governance models through the lens of Critical Theory and Open Systems Thinking. Political, corporate, and school system models are briefly reviewed before moving on to application to colleges and universities. Each chapter concludes with a continuous story of a young and maturing college vice president as she grapples with a static and worn governance system at her institution. She strives to reinvigorate the notion of shared governance and to bring staff and students into the process. The final three chapters of the book each include an essay written by individuals who have served on the ground level of shared governance at their institution. These people include: an administrative assistant who helped to create a Staff Council; a Student Government Association president who took a nascent SGA and gave students a new voice; and, an associate dean who mentored students in this developmental process.

Consociational power sharing is increasingly gaining ground, right around the world, as a means for resolving political conflict in divided societies. In this volume, edited by Rupert Taylor, nineteen internationally-respected scholars engage in a lively debate about the merits of the theory underlying this approach. The volume focuses specifically on one of the leading cases under the global spotlight, the Northern Ireland conflict, and brings together the most prominent proponents and opponents of consociationalism. Northern Ireland’s transition from war to peace is seen by consociationalists as flowing from the historic Belfast Agreement of 1998, and specifically from the Agreement’s consociational framework. The Northern Ireland case is marketed by consociationalists as representing best practice, and as providing a template for ending conflicts in other parts of the world. However, as this volume interrogates, on what grounds, and to what extent, can such a positive reading be upheld? Taken as a whole, this volume, structured as a symposium around the highly-influential argument of John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, offers comparative, engaging, and critical insight into how political theory can contribute to the creation of a better world. Consociational Theory is an important text for anyone with an interest in political theory, conflict resolution in divided societies, or Irish politics.