2016 Annual Conference

Power structures inside the classroom impact adult education and the adult learner. Through a solution based activity participants will analyze social and personal power structures that influence adult educators and the student-teacher dynamic.

Adult educators, program managers and directors’ could benefit from consciously analyzing how their personal and social power, beyond that of lesson planning and curriculum selection, impacts their interactions in the classroom. By assessing how personal power can both negatively and positively influence student success, educators and their supervisors can provide improved services to students.

With the advent of new laws for education of adults, the influx of returning citizens from our prisons and the expanding diversity of the US population, adult education will become more diverse. As adult educators, we must be able to understand the shifting dynamics within our lives and the lives of our students so we may best serve our students. By understanding and respecting the differences and influences, we will be better equipped to achieve positive outcomes within our programs.
Assessing power structures and power mapping, though started within the psychological discipline, is used extensively by US grassroots political movements. Using an adapted tool to analyze ourselves and our influences, we will be able to target where and how our teaching is and is not working and what we can do to improve our it through explicit means.