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EMPOWERING CLASSROOM BY

COLLABORATIVE INTERACTIONS
http://www.mnurulikhsansaleh.com/2017/09/empowering-classroom-by-collaborative.html

My lecture, Linda and I :)


Interactions between teachers and students in classrooms have huge roles in the
success of the learning-teaching engagement. These interactions can be in the
environment of social-power relations or promotion of students’ academic
achievement (Roorda, Koomen, Spilt, & Oort, 2011, p. 493). Even though there
is a challenge for some teachers to build power relations to engage critically with
students as individuals and collectives in effective education, there is a solution.
In my own experience, my teachers at university gave me opportunities to ask
and to collaborate in the classroom. Then I implemented this chance. I always
communicated with and questioned my teachers’ and friends’ explanations if
their understanding of the material was not comprehensive.
From those experiences, I know that this approach will bring coercive to
collaborative relations. Coercive relations involves the exercise of power by a
dominant individual to the disadvantage of a subordinated individual.
Collaborative relations suggest the sense of the term ‘power’ that becomes to
‘empowered’ to achieve more. When an individual becomes more empowered,
there is more creation of sharing to the classroom that meets the needs of diverse
learners (Beaty-O’Ferrall, Green, & Hanna, 2010, p. 4). The term empowerment
can be defined as the collaborative creation of power where students in these
empowering classroom contexts know that their voices will be heard and
respected. (Cummins, 2009, p. 263).
The concept of collaborative relations meets with the concept of the sociology of
pedagogic voice. This concept supports that pedagogies construct the students’
voice and bring democratic reform. The voices diminish social class, sexualities,
gender, and ethnicity/race and create equality in learning (Arnot & Reay, 2007,
p. 313). In this context, students become subjects, an agent of knowledge,
producing idea from a certain experience and standpoint in the classroom.
Overall, the way I participated in the class by giving an argument is empowering
the classroom which is appropriate with the theories. Therefore, the classroom is
the right place to build power relations between students and teachers.

References
Arnot, M., & Reay, D. (2007). A sociology of pedagogic voice: Power, inequality
and pupil consultation. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education,
28(3), 311-325.
Beaty-O’Ferrall, M. E., Green, A., & Hanna, F. (2010). Classroom management
strategies for difficult students: Promoting change through relationships. Middle
School Journal, 41(4), 4-11.
Cummins, J. (2009). Pedagogies of choice: Challenging coercive relations of
power in classrooms and communities. International Journal of Bilingual
Education and Bilingualism, 12(3), 261-271.
Roorda, D. L., Koomen, H. M., Spilt, J. L., & Oort, F. J. (2011). The influence of
affective teacher–student relationships on students’ school engagement and
achievement: A meta-analytic approach. Review of Educational Research, 81(4),
493-529.

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