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Engaging Feminist Pedagogy to Rewrite Authority in the Classroom
The Role of Embodiment in Establishing Authority: Application and Practice
Engaging Feminist Pedagogy to Rewrite Authority in the Classroom
When starting my graduate studies, my pedagogy classes focused heavily on discussing Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and incorporating student-centered approaches into our teaching. However, we did not fully discuss the difference in setting and circumstance between Freire’s teaching experience in the 1960s in Brazil and our current circumstances as instructors in higher education in the U.S. in 2025. We also did not acknowledge the difference in Freire’s positionality as a white man and the positionality of GTAs and marginalized instructors.
Kathleen Weiler advocates for a feminist pedagogical framework that expands on Freire’s ideas but breaks down the notion that a universalized approach of decentering authority could work for all instructors (“Freire”). By addressing their positionalities as women of color, Juanita Johnson-Bailey and Ming-Yeh Lee further complicate the notion that not all instructors, and not even all women, can be expected to decenter or approach their authority in the same way; there can be no effective, generic feminist pedagogy because all instructors are operating within different contexts and intersections of oppression. I had always understood “authority” in the classroom to be a negative principle. As a new GTA, I felt awkward and uncomfortable trying to be the “authority” in my classroom because I felt I was furthering a power imbalance based in patriarchy and hierarchy. When considering this basic idea of authority, I first had to restructure my connotation of positive authority versus oppressive authoritarianism.
By claiming that we belong in front of the classroom, that our knowledge, experiences, expertise, and identities validate our position as instructors, we are not maintaining a hierarchy of teacher-above-student, but reversing a hierarchy that dictates Other as inadequate, unprepared, inappropriate. Embracing authority, as articulated by feminist scholars of color who have had to justify their positions in the classroom and the academy, does not mean belittling students by making them feel smaller, but instead empowering Othered instructors as leaders worth following. For example, Johnson-Bailey and Lee embrace their authority as women of color by relying on methods of both lecture and facilitation instead of just facilitation and encouraging all voices to participate in discussions (119). I apply Johnson-Bailey and Lee’s methods in my classroom to show my students that my role is still to support, assist, and empower them, though my role is set apart by having different parameters and expectations as the leader of the class.
Similarly, in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mariko Silver explains that “it’s OK to lead like a woman…In consciously choosing to engage in a way that is authentic to me, I hope to model a form of leadership that is different from the traditional (gendered) assumption of authority and authoritativeness, one which helps me move beyond the double bind—be aggressively authoritative but don't be pushy—that women in leadership often experience.” I appreciate Silver’s use of personal experience to detail how she moves beyond the normalized concept of authority and into something positive instead. For example, women can be sensitive, caring, and empathetic for their students while still asking for their respect and asserting themselves as leadership figures in the classroom.
Susan Stanford Friedman made a similar point in 1985, expertly pointing out that patriarchy has warped our idea of authority as something inherently negative when, instead, it can and should feel like a natural assertion of our knowledge, credibility, and expertise (206-207). Sarah Klanderman and Reshma Menon also discuss positive connotations of authority, speaking from their experiences as women and graduate student instructors. Klanderman and Menon specifically differentiate “establishing authority” from “being authoritarian (speaking over students who are being disruptive, ignoring student questions, and bossing students around instead of working alongside them)” (48, 50). This important distinction highlights the same key understanding I and many other scholars have reached about authority and how we can practice it: there is a vast difference between authority as positive and authoritarianism as harmful to the classroom. Authority does not have to be negative but instead can be a path to building connections, trust, and mutual respect in the classroom for students and instructors. The first step in affirming our presence and identities as Other instructors or GTAs is to reclaim the concept of authority as an extension of the role we belong and can succeed in. Then, by acknowledging that GTAs can assume a role of authority in classrooms, we correct the tradition of hierarchical abuses of power that have repeatedly occurred in college classrooms, and we correct the notion that we are the “Inappropriate Other” and unworthy of embracing authority.