Power and Caring

Abstract

Caring with respect to teachers and students is usually defined as a reciprocal relationship. The power of the teacher is not always apparent in this definition. This article examines how power, in the caring perspective, can be seen as moral authority. The ethnographic study reported here examines the classroom of a traditional teacher-centered teacher and the way she constructed caring using her power. Her construction implies a critique of our usual ways of thinking about power. Because in this ethnography the researcher was part of the social scene of the classroom and was dramatically affected by the study, this article is written in the “I-witnessing” or “confessional” genre.