Negotiating authority through cultivating a classroom community of inquiry

This qualitative study examines how authority was negotiated in an undergraduate teacher education course. As the teacher of the course, I involved students in on-going processes of collaborative dialogue and deliberation about issues of importance to those involved through cultivating a classroom community of inquiry. The findings suggest that constructing relations of mutual interdependence, deriving legitimacy from mutually recognized sources, and communicating about the problem rather than the people present potential frameworks for negotiating authority in teacher education. Such knowledge is important for informing efforts to foster democratic teacher education practices and prepare future teachers to teach reflectively.

► I examined how authority was negotiated in an undergraduate teacher education course.
► I featured efforts to cultivate open communication through collaborative dialogue.
► Creating a community of inquiry helped create democratic authority relations.
► It fostered processes of mutual renewal and reconstruction over unilateral transmission.
► Doing so is important for helping future teachers teach democratically and reflectively.