Experimental authority in the lecture theatre

ABSTRACT

Authority is one of the most problematic and ambiguous concepts in social and educational theory. Authority is a relation that is based on disparities of knowledge, expertise or experience. Drawing on teaching observations and interviews with undergraduate students and lecturers about their experiences of large-group teaching, I argue that in contrast to lecturers’ focus on professional authority and expertise, many students respond most strongly to experiential forms of authority in lectures. In other words, there is a disparity between students’ and educators’ conceptions of pedagogic authority. Through a discussion of a teaching intervention aiming to playfully experiment with authority relations in the lecture theatre, the paper contributes to a conceptualization of an emancipatory and experimental politics of educational authority, one where students are challenged, not only to think independently, but to see their own existence – the grounds for their actions – as an important intellectual problem to engage with. This requires moving beyond the dominant Weberian ideal types of educational authority (traditional, rational-legal, charismatic, and charismatic-intellectual) towards a fuller understanding of experiential forms of authority.

KEYWORDS:

• Atmosphere
• authority
• bureaucracy
• experimental geographies
• charisma
• humour
• Weber

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This exercise is adapted from a teaching technique attributed to Nikolas Rose by Les Back (2016).