‘The teacher who helps children learn best’: affect and authority in the traditional primary classroom

Abstract

This paper draws on the views of nearly 400 Year 5 pupils across nine classes in three government primary schools in Alexandria, Egypt. It explores how they perceived the role of affect in their classroom; and their teachers’ authority. By presenting pupils with sentences to complete, our research explored how the prevailing traditional approach to teaching influenced pupils in their English classroom. We also collected data by interviewing 38 pupils individually and carrying out Group Interviews with the pupils’ teachers. We concluded that pupils were acutely aware of how their feelings and their relationship to the teacher influenced their capacity to learn cognitively. Many of them said that they did not respect those teachers who refused to exercise an ethic of care in the classroom. In these cases, they did not see their teachers as authoritative; and pupils’ learning was impeded.

Keywords:

• Egypt
• ethic of care
• authority
• affect
• classroom learning