Agent and subject of discipline: How the novice teacher experiences the techniques of power

This phenomenological study explored how five elementary school teachers experienced their first year of teaching as both the subject and agent of discipline. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s conceptualizations of power, discipline, and resistance, the investigator analyzed interview data that focused on questions concerning how novice teachers establish their own classroom management techniques, what norms they followed and resisted, as well as how and when they complied (or did not) in order to gain membership into their school/teacher community. Analysis indicated that, although novice teachers expressed many concerns, they largely complied with the norms established institutionally for managing student behavior, and with those affecting their own teacher behavior. However they did resist some of the norms that concerned teacher accountability. This study and its analysis of the institutional and discursive power evident in the lives of novice teachers suggests a need for teacher education programs to better prepare student teachers for the issues of power and discipline that will mark their professional lives and those of their students