Teaching Beyond the Progressive–Traditional Dichotomy: Sharing Authority and Sharing Vulnerability

Abstract

We explore teaching and learning beyond the familiar dichotomy between the authoritarian concept of the hard place of traditional teaching (in which the individual’s experiential knowledge is neglected) and the abdication of authority inherent in the soft place of progressive teaching (in which the achieved cultural knowledge of the teacher is regarded as an embarrassment). Our need to theorize this different place, or a different positioning of teacher and authority, arises in part from the difficulties our students and we ourselves have in a classroom that does not answer to either of these conceptually familiar places. The different place is a place of shared authority. Sharing authority exposes our limitations and leads to a shared vulnerability.