Inquiring into ‘techniques of power’ with preservice teachers through the ‘school film’ The Paper Chase

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Teaching and Teacher Education 19 (2003) 543–557

Inquiring into ‘techniques of power’ with preservice teachers through the ‘school film’ The Paper Chase James Trier* University of North Carolina, CB 3500 Peabody Hall, Chapel Hall, NC 27599, USA Received 26 February 2002; received in revised form 27 February 2003; accepted 7 March 2003

Abstract In working with preservice teachers, I have often coupled academic readings with ‘‘school films’’ to take up critical issues. In this article, I discuss a project I designed to introduce preservice teachers to the idea of ‘‘techniques of power’’ through analyses of the film The Paper Chase (1973), analyses informed by Gore’s (in: T. Popkewitz, M. Brennan (Eds.), Foucault’s Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education, Teachers College Press, New York, 1998, pp. 231–251) articulation of eight ‘‘techniques of power’’ and certain elements from Foucault’s (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Random House, New York, 1977) Discipline and Punish. I also explain how preservice teachers began to view teaching and disciplinary practices through the lens of techniques of power. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Preservice teacher education; Techniques of power; School films; Critical reflection

1. Introduction At different times during the last few years, I have worked with preservice teachers who were preparing for careers as elementary teachers, middle school teachers, and secondary English teachers. One major aspect of my work with preservice teachers, no matter what educational context they were preparing for, has been to introduce them to a wide range of theories and issues that they can take up for a variety of purposes. My main approach has involved coupling academic readings with school films,1 a *Tel.: +1-919-843-4627. E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Trier). 1 Generally, I define a ‘‘school film’’ as a film that in some way—even incidentally—is about an educator or a student.

practice that other educators have also engaged in (Freedman, 1999; Giroux, 1993; Paul, 2001; Robertson, 1995). For example, I have introduced the concepts of ‘‘habitus’’ and ‘‘cultural capital’’ by having preservice teachers analyze selected readings by Bourdieu (1984), Apple (1990), and Fiske (1992), and then viewing films such as Educating Rita, School Ties, and Disturbing Behavior. Each of these films takes place in an educational setting and presents characters who struggle to become recognized members of a (footnote continued) This broad definition has allowed me to conceptualize the school film genre as being comprised of well over 100 films (Trier, 2000). Examples of very well-known school films are Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, and To Sir, with Love. Examples of lesser-known school films are Waterland, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and Small Change.

0742-051X/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0742-051X(03)00051-9

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particular habitus that is different from their own. After analyzing the films, preservice teachers described—in terms of habitus and cultural capital—their own social–economic–educational– cultural histories, and they also explained why some of their own students were more (or less) successful in school in part when the values and practices of their habiti were (or were not) prized by those of the schools they attended (Trier, 2002). Another example of how I drew upon academic readings and school films for a particular pedagogical aim involved problematizing preservice teachers’ ‘‘autonomous’’, traditional notions of literacy (Street, 1984, 1995) by having them read Gee’s (1996) articulation of Discourses and multiple literacies, and then having them view the film Teachers for its construction of literacy.2 Through close readings of both the academic and cinematic texts, students challenged the film’s assumption that literacy is merely the ability to pass standardized tests, and they opened up to a more sophisticated conceptualization based on Gee’s definition of literacy as being the mastery of a secondary discourse (Trier, 2001b).3 In this article, I discuss a project that involved engaging one particular cohort of preservice teachers in an inquiry into ‘‘techniques of power’’. The specific focus of the project was on the relations of power that exist between teachers and students.4 Before discussing the various 2 I have capitalized the term ‘‘Discourse’’ here because Gee does so in his work. Gee (1996) defines ‘‘Discourse’’ in this way: ‘‘A Discourse is a socially accepted association among ways of using language, other symbolic expressions, and ‘artifacts’, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or ‘social network’, or to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful ‘role’’’ (p. 131). Although my use of the term ‘‘discourse’’ follows Gee in this article, I will not capitalize the term hereafter. 3 For more accounts, see Trier, 2001a, 2003. 4 I want to acknowledge from the outset that by deciding to focus this article on one particular relation of power—i.e., the one that exists between teachers and students—I have not addressed the many other relations of power that exist between people within a school, including teacher–principal relations, teacher–teacher relations, teacher–parent relations, cooperating teacher–student teacher relations, and so on. However, seminar discussions about these relations of power certainly occurred during the semester that this study took place. My justification

activities of the project, however, I will describe the context of the project and the circumstances that led me to design it.

2. Situating the ‘‘techniques of power’’ project I designed this project while working with preservice teachers in the elementary education program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The central goal of the program is to prepare critically reflective teachers (about which I will say more below). The project took place as part of a practicum for which I was both the instructor and the supervisor. The practicum was for preservice teachers who were beginning the last year of the program. The cohort was composed of 20 students—16 females and 4 males—all of whom were young, white, and from middle-class backgrounds. Most were preparing for elementary certification (grades 1–6), though a few were also preparing for middle school certification (grades 7–8). This was the students’ second practicum, and after completing it, they began their full-time student teaching semester, which was their culminating experience. During this practicum semester, students were also taking math, social studies, and science methods courses with other instructors.5 The students and I (footnote continued) for focusing on one particular relation of power is that I wanted to develop one example in as much detail as possible, which is something I felt I would not be able to do, at least in this article, if I began to broaden the focus to other relations of power. This is not to imply, of course, that a substantive article could not be written about many relations of power that exist. I would also note that other researchers who have discussed relations of power in articles have also focused on one particular relation, presumably for the same reason I have in this article (see, for example, Buendia, 2000; Buzzelli & Johnston, 2001; Cothran & Ennis, 1997; Graham, 1999; Phelan, 2001; Ritchie, Rigano, & Lowry, 2000). 5 The practicum preceding this one is the reading methods practicum, which is the students’ first formal experience in classrooms. Although the two practicums are fundamentally alike in their structure, the second practicum is somewhat different from the reading practicum because it is a transitional experience. Students enter it having done some observing and teaching, they acquire a bit more teaching experience during this second practicum, but they are not yet in the more intense phase of student teaching, when they will assume daily

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met weekly for one-hour seminars throughout the semester. After the first month of the semester, students began a nine-week observational field experience in public school classrooms. They were in classrooms with their cooperating teachers for three consecutive mornings each week. During this field experience, they typically observed and did some one-on-one and small-group teaching for the first few weeks. Gradually, they began teaching occasional whole-class lessons, and they eventually assumed full responsibility for teaching all the morning classes during the last week of their placement. As their supervisor, I observed each student twice, usually while they were teaching a small-group or whole-group lesson. After an observation, the student and I held a postconference, typically with the participation of the cooperating teacher. My overall goals in the practicum were the same as those of the teacher education program as a whole. In the words of Zeichner and Liston (1987), who described and assessed the program at one point, the specific goals of this program emphasize the preparation of teachers who are both willing and able to reflect on the origins, purposes, and consequences of their actions, as well as on the material and ideological constraints and encouragements embedded in the classroom, school, and societal contexts in which they work. These goals are directed toward enabling student teachers to develop the pedagogical habits and skills necessary for self-directed growth and toward preparing them, individually and collectively, to participate as full partners in the making of educational policies (p. 23).6 Elsewhere, Zeichner (1992) explains that critically reflective teachers recognize ‘‘the fundamentally political character of all schooling’’, and their (footnote continued) responsibility for teaching a full load of classes throughout a semester. 6 For a full discussion of the goals, epistemological grounding, program organization, curricular components, etc., of the elementary education program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, see Zeichner and Liston (1987), as well as Zeichner (1995).

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‘‘reflections center upon such issues as the gendered nature of schooling and of the teacher’s work, and the relationships between race and social class, on the one hand, and access to school knowledge and school achievement, on the other’’ (p. 59). Zeichner states that a central issue for critically reflective teachers concerns how their ‘‘actions maintain and/or disrupt the status quo in schooling and society’’. Zeichner argues that teacher educators should attempt to develop this critical orientation in preservice teachers ‘‘by deliberately focusing students’ attention on particular kinds of issues connected to their everyday teaching activities that raise questions of equity and social justice’’ (p. 58). As mentioned above, my main purpose in the practicum was to engage preservice teachers in thinking critically about a range of educational issues. It is important to note here that, because most of my colleagues in the program also had the same purpose of preparing critically reflective teachers according to the conceptualization defined above, I was able to assume at the beginning of the practicum that the preservice teachers had already engaged in many critical discussions and analyses that problematized educational phenomena through the discourses of race, class, gender, multiculturalism, diversity, and so on. In other words, by the time of this second practicum, most of the students had become sensitized to the critical orientation that Zeichner articulates in the above passages, and they typically took up these discourses to discuss issues during seminars and in their various written work. My impression of each new cohort that I met was that the overall critical understanding that they had acquired by the time of this second practicum was that many of the dominant discourses in schools were problematic, and that their role as teachers should not be simply to ‘‘fit in’’ and reproduce the status quo, but instead to question the rationale of dominant discourses—such as the practice of tracking, which typically marginalizes people of color or those from the working class—and challenge such discourses, over time, in a variety of ways through their own teaching practices. That said, it was also my experience that with any given cohort, I was able to engage them in analyses of issues that they

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had not previously taken up in depth. The main way that such issues arose was through what students wrote in their weekly reflective essays, which they began writing once they started their nine-week observation experience. The issues expressed in these reflective essays typically became the focus of seminar discussions. One commonality in my experience of working with preservice teachers in the program was that soon after they began observing in classrooms, they inevitably began to articulate a number of concerns related to the issue of ‘‘power’’. These articulations occurred in the first few reflective essays that students wrote. Interestingly though, the articulations rarely included the term ‘‘power’’. For example, what follows are some representative passages from three reflective essays of the preservice teachers who are the focus of this study, essays written during the first three weeks of being in classrooms (which is to say the fifth, sixth, and seventh weeks of the practicum): The principal of the school runs the show. I have been in a few faculty meetings, and what he says goes. I have seen him shoot down teachers when they voice an opinion that he doesn’t like. (My cooperating teacher told me that if he ends up disliking you, he will move your room or not support you if a parent complains. So, he’s got everyone in a state of fear and nervousness most of the time.) Last week, I sat in with my cooperating teacher on a night of parent–teacher conferences. Some were very pleasant. Some, however, were surprising in how they showed me how much influence a parent can wield. One parent, upset with the grade her daughter got, had taken up the issue with the principal, and eventually the teacher changed the student’s grade to a better one. During the conference, the parent was letting the teacher know that it better not happen again. She didn’t say it outright, but you knew she could make trouble for the teacher if she wanted. My teacher has made it clear to me her frustration over all the testing that they have to do. There are end-of-grade tests, mastery-of-

content tests, writing placement tests, and others. [The student’s teacher] says it used to be different. As she put it, ‘‘Teachers actually once had a lot of control over what they taught. Now, they are trying to turn us into test-giving drones’’. None of these passages includes the term ‘‘power’’, yet each one can be read as addressing various relations of power. The first passage addresses the power relation at work among teachers and their principal. The second concerns a power relation involving a teacher and a parent (and an administrator). The third concerns the relation of power between teachers, curriculum, and testing. Along with demonstrating that discussions about power often take place without explicitly mentioning the term, the above passages also have something else in common that is important: in each passage, a relation of power is construed in negative terms. In other words, each passage describes relations of power that could have serious negative consequences on the daily work and long-term professional lives of teachers. In interpreting the subtext of these passages to be about issues related to power, I designed a project that would engage students in exploring the role that power played in the classrooms and schools where they were observing. Specifically, I sought to introduce students to a theoretical framework that they could take up to think critically about what they were observing in classrooms. Taking up this theory would provide students with a critical discourse that they could access in what they wrote, said, and thought about power. The activities that comprised this project are as follows: 1. Students viewed the film The Paper Chase (1973) (I summarize the plot below). 2. Students wrote a reflective essay in response to reading Jenny Gore’s (1998) chapter ‘‘Disciplining Bodies: On the Continuity of Power Relations in Pedagogy’’, as well as selections from Foucault’s (1977) Discipline and Punish. 3. Students read and responded to my written interpretations of key scenes from The Paper Chase. (As will become apparent below, my reading of these scenes is done through the

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discourse of techniques of power that Gore articulates.) 4. Students took up the language of techniques of power in their reflective essays to describe their own experiences in classrooms during the latter part of their practicum observations. 5. Students reflected on their experiences of (A) studying the techniques of power and (B) of taking up a film text in tandem with academic readings to explore the theories of discourses and techniques of power.

Kingsfield’s class at different times during the year. There are also a number of scenes that show Hart, Ford, and the others meeting for their study group. As the academic year unfolds, the tension among the students in the study group builds, students struggle to stay afloat in Kingsfield’s class and law school, and the academic ‘‘duel’’ between Hart and Kingsfield intensifies.

3. A brief summary of The Paper Chase

After the students viewed The Paper Chase, they wrote an explanatory essay about the Gore (1998) and Foucault (1977) readings.7 Gore’s chapter is an account of a study that mainly sought to answer these questions: ‘‘How do power relations function at the micro-level of pedagogical practices? To what extent is the functioning of power relations continuous across different pedagogical sites? Are the mechanisms of schooling like the mechanisms of prisons, in terms of the micropractices of power Foucault identified?’’ (pp. 232, 234). The study involved doing hundreds of observations at four schools, and gathering field notes and tapes of data, which were eventually coded for the following techniques of power: surveillance, normalization, exclusion, classification, distribution, individualization, totalization, and regulation. After analyzing the data, Gore concluded that ‘‘the techniques of power that Foucault elaborated in prisons [were] applicable to contemporary pedagogical practice’’ (p. 234). To deepen the students’ reading of Gore’s chapter, I also had them read selected sections of Discipline and Punish that Gore refers to in her chapter. Through these selected sections, students became familiar with terms such as ‘‘disciplinary power’’, ‘‘the Panopticon’’, ‘‘the gaze’’, and ‘‘sovereign power’’. In their response essays to the Gore and Foucault readings, preservice teachers were to summarize what the eight techniques of power were. Through their essays, as well as through the

Because The Paper Chase is a central text in this article, I will provide a brief summary for those unfamiliar with the film. The Paper Chase is set in the early 1970s and tells the story of a group of first-year law students at Harvard. The main character is a student named Hart. Early in the film, Hart is asked by a student named Ford to join his study group, which Ford describes as ‘‘a device, a tool. Groups of first-year students get together a couple times a week to read the class work, the case books. They make outlines and then share them. It helps at exam time.’’ Hart joins, and during the first meeting, the five students decide who will be responsible for each class. Hart chooses contract law, taught by Professor Kingsfield, who has the reputation of being brilliant, intimidating, and extremely demanding (some think he is cruel). As a third-year law student tells Hart, ‘‘Kingsfield’s driven a lot of lawyers mad over the past 40 years since he’s been teaching here.’’ Hart’s decision to cover Kingsfield’s class for the study group reveals his desire to be challenged, not only because he is well aware of Kingsfield’s notorious reputation, but also because during the first session of Kingsfield’s ‘‘Contracts’’ class, which took place before the study group convened, Kingsfield had humiliated Hart so badly that immediately after class, Hart dashed into the men’s room and vomited (I describe the scene in detail later). There are many scenes throughout the film that take place in the large lecture hall where Kingsfield holds class, so we see how the five students in the study group are faring in

4. Gore and Foucault on power

7 Because I discuss only one piece by Gore (1998) and one piece by Foucault (1977), I will hereafter refer to these authors only by name to avoid the needless repetition of in-text, parenthetical publication date references.

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seminar discussion we had about Gore’s study and the Foucault readings, most students revealed a beginning understanding of the different techniques of power.

5. Techniques of power in The Paper Chase With the intent of furthering the students’ understandings of techniques of power, I presented my own close reading of certain key scenes from The Paper Chase through the framework of techniques of power. My method was first to show a particular scene and then explain which techniques of power were represented in the scene. After the seminar in which I developed this close reading (essentially through a lecture), I provided students with a print copy of my reading so that they could refer to it when I asked them to write about the techniques of power that they saw being practiced in the schools where they were placed. What I will do in the following section is present one part of that print version of my close reading.8 ‘Never assume anything in my classroom!’: Surveillance, Distribution, Exclusion, Individualization, and Normalization. The main segment that I analyze in terms of techniques of power happens to be the series of scenes that begin the film. This key opening segment of scenes is set in a large lecture hall composed of seven or eight tiers of curved rows of seating that form a half-wheel whose designed focus—or ‘‘hub’’—is the lecture platform. The rows have wooden chairs stationed behind wooden tables. Narrow aisles resembling spokes form pathways through the tiers, and from the main entrance at the back, one large aisle descends to the lecture platform, which is elevated and spatially removed some distance from the first 8 The complete version of my close reading is too long to present here because it consists of detailed readings of additional scenes from the film. In that fuller version, I discuss many other key scenes in terms of two more techniques of power that Gore examines: totalization and classification. The partial example presented here, however, does attend to most of the techniques of power, and it is representative of the whole version.

row of seating. Behind and off to the side of the platform is a door that only the professor uses to enter and exit. In the initial scene, as the film credits appear and disappear, the hall is empty. Eventually, students appear, moving down the aisles and into the rows. They do not, however, sit just anywhere. Each looks down at the tables, where (as we learn shortly) numbers identify seats, and students move about in search of their assigned spaces. When the hall is filled, the final line of text momentarily appears on the screen: ‘‘Harvard Law School/Academic Year Begins’’. The scene cuts to an extreme close-up of a seating chart that has passport-sized ‘‘head’’ photos of every student. Under each photo is a student’s name and a seat number. A finger appears from the right of the screen and settles next to a photo labeled ‘‘Mr. Hart’’, stationed at seat 149. Then we hear the stentorian voice of Professor Kingsfield, who begins the following sequence of dialogue (words spoken with emphasis are italicized): Kingsfield: Mr. Hart. Will you recite the facts of Hawkins vs. McGee? [Hart does not say anything] I do have your name right—you are Mr. Hart? Hart: [In a soft quiet voice] Yes, my name is Hart. Kingsfield: [In a raised tone that he maintains throughout this exchange] You’re not speaking loud enough, Mr. Hart. Will you speak up? Hart: [As before, in a quiet voice] Yes, my name is Hart [a slight laughter in his voice is noticeable when he says ‘‘Hart’’]. Kingsfield: Mr. Hart, you’re still not speaking loud enough. Will you stand? [Hart stands] Now that you’re on your feet, Mr. Hart—maybe the class will be able to understand you. You are on your feet? Hart: [A bit louder than before] Yes, I’m on my feet. Kingsfield: Loudly, Mr. Hart. Fill this room with your intelligence. Now, will you give us the facts of the case?

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Hart: [Pauses] I haven’t read the case. Kingsfield: Class assignments for the first day are posted on the bulletin boards in Langdell and Austin Halls—you must’ve known that. Hart: No. Kingsfield: You assumed that this first class would be a lecture, an introduction to the course. Hart: Yes sir. Kingsfield: Never assume anything in my classroom! Mr. Hart, I will myself give you the facts of the case. Hawkins vs. McGee is a case in contract law, the subject of our study. The boy burned his hand by touching an electric wire. A doctor who was anxious to experiment in skin-grafting asked to operate on the hand, guaranteeing that he would restore it 100%. [Hart sits down.] He took a piece of skin from the boy’s chest, and grafted it over the unfortunate boy’s hand. The operation failed to produce a healthy hand—instead, it produced a hairy hand. A hand not only burned, but covered with dense, matted hair. Mr. Hart. [pause] What damages do you think the doctor should pay? [Hart stands up but doesn’t say anything] What did the doctor promise? Hart: [Noticeably unsure of his response] There was a promise—to fix the hand—back to the way it was before it was burned. Kingsfield: And the result of the operation? Hart: The hand was much worse than before he went to the doctor. Kingsfield: How should the court measure the damages? What should the doctor pay the boy? Hart: The doctor should—[clears throat]— the doctor should pay for what he did—and should pay—for the difference between—what the boy—had, a burned hand—and what the doctor gave him, a—burned and hairy hand?

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Kingsfield: [Unimpressed and dismissive of Hart’s answer]: Mr. Pruitt! [Another student begins answering.] This scene ends abruptly, cutting to the image of Hart dashing though a lavatory and disappearing into a stall. A toilet flushes just after the sound of Hart vomiting, and we assume class has ended and this is Hart’s reaction to having been humiliated by Kingsfield. A reading of this segment of scenes, one that draws on selected passages from Foucault’s (1977) Discipline and Punish, can begin by attending to the architecture of the lecture hall. The first scene offers an exemplar representation of surveillance in the form of the hall’s panoptic architectural design. My description above suggests, in Foucault’s words, how ‘‘surveillance is expressed in the architecture’’. The hall seems designed to be what Foucault calls a ‘‘perfect disciplinary apparatus’’, which is one that ‘‘would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly. A central point would be both the source of light illuminating everything, and a locus of convergence for everything that must be known: a perfect eye that nothing would escape and a center towards which all gazes would be turned’’ (p. 173). Upon the platform, Kingsfield can walk freely in the ample space it affords, and from this central position he casts his gaze upon the students, who individually meet his eye. Only he possesses a panoptic perspective. Also, just as Kingsfield occupies that central space physically, he also occupies it symbolically. The elevated platform signals his symbolic ‘‘higher’’ position and distinction: that of high cultural capital coupled with high economic capital (Bourdieu, 1984). He is a famous, powerful figure in the law discourse that the students hope one day to become a member of. He is ‘‘the source of light illuminating everything’’ in the sense that he has the knowledge and the legal way of knowing that the students must acquire. In great part, it will be through Kingsfield that ‘‘everything that must be known’’ will be learned and acquired by the students. The very architecture of the hall seems to suggest all of this. This reading can now be extended by taking up Gore’s observation about the technology of

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distribution. At one point, Gore explains that ‘‘the distribution of bodies in space—arranging, isolating, separating, ranking—contributes to the functioning of disciplinary power’’ (p. 241). This power to distribute is represented in the image of the seating chart that identifies students by photo, name, and seat number. As mentioned, students entered the hall looking for specific seat numbers, which implies a previous process of providing requested information and probably a passportsized photo. This process secured for the professor the knowledge that when he walked into his lecture on the first day, he would have an initial form of control over the 200 or so students in the hall. Such a distribution system stations students in a space they did not choose, almost ensures that they will be seated by someone they do not know, and prevents any previous friendship among students from carrying itself into this academic space. Students are isolated and solitary—and the chart is fixed for the year. In one sense, they can be seen as docile bodies subject to the surveillance of the professor’s disciplinary gaze. He knows where they are, where they will be, when they are absent, when they raise their hands, when they do not, and so on. Again drawing on (and quoting from) Foucault, we might see Kingsfield as a figure of sovereign power: he is ‘‘king’’ of his ‘‘field’’ of contract law, hence his name. Hart represents ‘‘the accused’’ who Kingsfield subjects to a form of what Foucault describes as a ‘‘legal ceremonial that must produce, open for all to see, the truth of the crime’’ (p. 35) that has been committed. Hart’s ‘‘crime’’? He came to this first class unprepared, as most of the students probably did. In the interaction between Kingsfield and Hart, at least three techniques of power that Gore discusses are represented: exclusion, individualization, and normalization. Kingsfield excludes Hart by individualizing him, ascribing to him a negative performance and making him the object of humiliation. Kingsfield shows Hart to be irresponsible (he did not read the case), meekish (he does not speak loudly enough), and docile (on command, he stands up, sits down, stands again). One effect of this disciplining is that Kingsfield signals to everyone that whatever it is that Hart is not will

thereafter function as the norm. The ‘‘crowd’’ (the other law students) watching the various humiliations and ‘‘tortures’’ that Hart endures as he stands on the ‘‘scaffold’’ of Academia probably sympathize with him, but they say nothing and do not rise to his defense, no doubt out of the fear of drawing Kingsfield’s disciplinary gaze toward themselves. Word later gets around that Hart’s been ‘‘ripped up’’ by Kingsfield. Sovereign power has accomplished its goal. Kingsfield has taught the ‘‘crowd’’, through Hart, that he is their master for the semester, and they better perform accordingly, or else they will find themselves subjected to what Hart has experienced. However, Kingsfield’s intent is not to have Hart quit the course. Rather, he has used Hart temporarily to introduce norms. Foucault is relevant here when he explains that ‘‘the art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power, is aimed neither at expiation, nor even precisely at repression’’. He explains further that one of the main purposes of the art of punishing is that it refers individual actions to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space of differentiation and the principle of a rule to be followed. It differentiates individuals from one another, in terms of the following overall rule: that the rule be made to function as a minimal threshold, as an average to be respected or as an optimum towards which one must move (pp. 181–182). Hart’s ‘‘individual actions’’ of having made assumptions, of not having read the case, and of not acting in ways he should have (speaking up, speaking with confidence and ‘‘intelligence’’) serve as a ‘‘wholey field of comparison’’ for the rest of the students about what to do and not do. Hart’s temporary occupation of ‘‘a space of differentiation’’ signals to everyone what the ‘‘minimal threshold’’ of expectations is and what an ‘‘optimum’’ performance would be. Also, because Kingsfield does not seek ‘‘expiation’’ or ‘‘repression’’ with Hart, he finally withdraws his gaze from Hart, calling on another student before he has gone too far with Hart. (It is essential to mention here that the film is about Hart’s

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continual movement toward a final ‘‘optimum’’ performance in Kingsfield’s class.)

6. Students’ reactions to my close reading of selected scenes from The Paper Chase The prompt that I gave for this reflective essay was: ‘‘In what way, if any, has my close reading of the selected scenes from The Paper Chase contributed to your understanding of the techniques of power?’’ In their response essays to my close reading, most of the preservice teachers expressed that my interpretations of the scenes through a discourse of techniques of power had deepened their understandings of those techniques. Many of these expressions took the form of statements that focused on a particular passage in my close reading, a passage that students found especially productive. For example, one student explained that my analysis of the seating chart in terms of the techniques of distribution and surveillance caused her ‘‘to realize that even actions that seem most innocent, like making a seating chart or putting up a bulletin board could have a lot to do with power’’. She gave the example of how teachers often intentionally ‘‘make sure two friends are not sitting next to each other, which helps the teacher keep control better, or in your words ‘Such a distribution system stations students in a space they did not choose, almost ensures that they will be seated by someone they do not know, and prevents any previous friendship among students from carrying itself into this academic space’’. She added that teachers often arrange desks ‘‘in a way that adds to their control, such as having the desks not face a wall of windows, or not toward the clock, but usually toward the teacher’s desk’’. One student explained that my description of the lecture hall had led her to think about the architecture of a typical school in a new way. She wrote: Your description has really caused me to think about how the architecture of a school is conducive to surveillance. Most classroom doors have windows. This allows the principal

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to check on the teacher and students without entering the room—like the ‘‘panoptic’’ eye you mentionedy There are clocks in almost every room in the school, all so that students and teachers know when they can leave and how long they have to get where they’re going. The hallways in our school all lead to the central office, a lot like your description of the aisles [in the lecture hall] ‘‘resembling spokes that form pathwaysy [that lead] to the lecture platform.’’y The principal’s office has windows that have a view of the playground, so I guess she can see what kind of job teachers are doing keeping kids under control during recess. Another student explained, ‘‘When I came to the part when you say that Kingsfield ‘has used Hart temporarily to introduce norms’’, I thought about how teachers are always establishing what is normal and accepted in their classes, as opposed to what is not accepted. Like Kingsfield, when a teacher establishes a norm, he or she excludes something, so the two go together, as Gore says’’. She went on to say, ‘‘If you go far enough with this idea of ‘techniques of normalization’ pretty soon almost everything a teacher does could be seen in this light’’. She gave as examples ‘‘testing, monitoring hallways between classes, and doing lunch room duty’’, all of which are teaching responsibilities ‘‘that put the teacher in the role of maintaining norms’’. One student stated that my analysis of Kingsfield’s treatment of Hart caused her to read Gore’s chapter differently ‘‘the second time around by making [Gore’s] discussions about how ‘disciplinary power functions at the level of the body’ [Gore, p. 233] much more vivid and meaningful’’. She followed this with a statement about her own discomfort, as a beginning teacher, over the necessity of exercising controls of varying degrees over the bodies of her students: I don’t know if I will ever feel comfortable knowing I am carrying out the ‘disciplinary power’ of making my students do what I say. The idea makes me cringe sometimes when I think about having to say yes or no about a kid going to the bathroomy I also might have to suspend recess privileges and keep a kid off the

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playground for breaking a rule, which is a way of physically removing him from others, which itself is a way of punishing him. I guess I will justify it by saying it’s best for the kid to discipline him, and maybe that would be the truth. I don’t know. Kingsfield sure didn’t have any guilt about his position of power! In the next example, a student explains that my close reading had caused her to begin to reconceptualize her notions about power. She explained that after reading the Gore chapter, she had not been convinced about ‘‘the productiveness of power’’ (Gore, pp. 236, 237), but that my interpretation (of another, later segment of the film) had challenged her assumptions that a relation of power could not lead to a productive effect:

7. Preservice teachers’ articulations of ‘‘techniques of power’’ At this point, I felt confident that most of the preservice teachers had a clear understanding of what the eight techniques of power were, and I assigned the next activity, which called for students to discuss situations in which they felt that students in the schools where they were placed during the practicum were being subjected to various techniques of power. When possible, they were to draw upon Gore’s chapter, as well as the film The Paper Chase, in what they wrote. To convey how students articulated their observations, I will present two lengthy, representative passages, as well as some shorter examples. One example comes from a preservice teacher working in a fifth grade classroom who wrote: [Gore] talks about how exclusion is [the] ‘‘defining of the pathological.’’ She says it’s the flip-side of normalization. What is normal is what isn’t excluded. ‘‘Very often exclusion and normalization occurred together, where the pathological was named in the process of establishing the norm.’’ [Gore, pp. 238–239] In the film [The Paper Chase], the professor tried to exclude law students who weren’t able to write case studies well or who couldn’t keep up, like the student who said he had a photographic memory but who was failing the class.9y On my first day, my cooperating teacher pointed out all the children who ‘‘were on meds’’—her words. She then explained that these students often get ‘‘out of control’’ and if it happened, I will be asked to take them out of the classroom until they calmed downy Putting kids on ‘‘meds’’ like Ritalin is I think a way to exclude and include. The claim is that the drug will make children fit in better. What happens though is that some children get ostracized by

When you say that ‘‘Hart is responding positively to the relation of power with Kingsfield,’’ I can see how this is so. Gore’s phrase [actually, it is Foucault’s] ‘‘effects upon effects’’ makes sense to me when I think about the relationship between Hart and Kingsfield. All of Kingsfield’s actions cause reactions in Hart. Hart, however, is propelled by a desire to succeed. He wants ‘‘to enter the upper echelon’’ [Hart’s words], and he believes the only way to do that is by working hard in Kingsfield’s class. Even though Kingsfield makes his life miserable in one way, Hart believes it makes him a better law studenty He works harder and in the end, he gets the positive recognition and approval from Kingsfield. So the relation of power had positive outcomes [or ‘‘effects’’]. This is a new idea to me. These examples are representative of how the preservice teachers took up my close reading of a film text that represents ideas articulated by Gore and Foucault, and I think each example illustrates that the students found my interpretations productive in deepening the student’s engagement with the discourse of techniques of power.

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In the scene, a student in Kingsfield’s class is unable to explain the intricacies of a particular case. Kingsfield bores into him, asking him if he even read the case. The student says he did, adding that he has a ‘‘photographic memory’’. Kingsfield lays into the student, humiliating him by explaining that a photographic memory is of no use to him because it will not help him to think analytically.

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their classmates. One day one boy said to a girl [who was on Ritalin and who occasionally had to leave the room] ‘‘Why are you always crying and leaving the room like a baby?’’ I think the boy’s put down shows that he knows who is ‘‘pathological’’ and who is normal (he is). The following passage is from a reflective essay written by a preservice teacher who was working in an eighth grade classroom: Jennifer Gore says this about classification: ‘‘pedagogy proceeds via classificatory mechanisms—the classification of knowledge, the ranking and classification of individuals and groups.’’ She also uses the phrase ‘‘reproductive sorting functions of schools.’’y I see ‘‘sorting’’ everyday where I’m at. Of the five classes my teacher has, three are classified as advanced and two are lower ones. When I first was introduced to one of the ‘‘lower’’ classes, one student said ‘‘We’re the dumb class’’ and the rest of the students laughed. As we have talked about when reading the [Jeannie Oakes, 1987] article on tracking, this is tracking. I’m sure students know what it means to be in either an upper or lower track. Comparisons are made just on that basis. It is depressing to see this [practice of tracking]. It is even more depressing to think that these students [in the ‘‘lower’’ classes] had been ‘‘sorted out’’ probably in elementary school. Probably they were ‘‘behavior problems’’, so to control them, they got labeled in some way as needing special help or having some learning disability (what a negative phrase that is). These passages show preservice teachers taking up the terms of techniques of power and making references to Gore’s study and the film in order to articulate practices involving techniques of power. Throughout their reflective essays, preservice teachers described many such practices, usually in a way that revealed an understanding that those who were in the less powerful position in a relation of power usually were marginalized. For example, here are three shorter passages from some other reflective essays:

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The desk arrangement is rows, which allows the teacher easy surveillance of the class. She usually faces everyone, and she is great at keeping them focused on her. Anyone who puts their head on a desk or ‘‘chatters’’ gets a soft reprimand, which reinforces her norm of classroom behavior (‘‘Are you tired, Josh? Eyes up here, OK?’’) The way she has the students distributed helps her keep discipline. My teacher uses the technique of totalization in this way: when she wants attention, she claps her hands and suddenly all the children stop what they are doing and clap, too. Then she will say things like, ‘‘We don’t all seem to be ready [to] have a snack, right Jessica?’’ So, she includes by using ‘‘we’’ and excludes by identifying a certain child not paying attention. One way that [the teacher] individualizes her students is by putting their names on the board when they misbehave or don’t pay attention. All the kids know this is a punishmenty On the playground, I have heard kids get teased for having their names on the board. For the final formal activity of this project, students wrote a reflective essay (the substance of which became the central topic of discussion during seminar) in response to two questions designed to assess the effect of the project on the students. My prompt was this: (A) In what ways, if any, has the study of techniques of power altered your perception of what power is? Rely on Gore’s chapter to articulate your response, if you wish. (B) Has taking up a film text with academic readings been a productive experience, and if so, in what way? Most of the responses to (A) revealed that students felt they had begun to develop more complex understandings of power. The most prevalent response was the recognition that being involved in relations of power as teachers was an inevitability. One student’s articulation is representative of most of the students’ recognitions

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(‘‘site’’ refers here to the four different educational sites of Gore’s study): Gore says that ‘‘no site was free of power relations and no site ‘escaped’ the use of techniques of power’’ (p. 245)y She is saying that to try to ‘escape’ from a ‘relation of power’ is impossible, and I agree. Since we began studying these techniques, I have been seeing them in action all the time between my [cooperating] teacher and her studentsy I even notice myself thinking [while observing in classrooms] ‘‘there’s normalization, there’s exclusion, there’s surveillance’’ and things like that. Along with the recognition that power relations are inescapable, I also read this student’s articulation as strongly suggesting that she has genuinely begun to acquire a discourse of techniques of power, the evidence of which would be that she actually thinks in terms of that discourse. When one’s thoughts are informed by the language of a discourse, it is strongly suggestive that the discourse has begun to be internalized. The other most prevalent response to (A) was that most students expressed a shift in how they conceptualized power. They explained that they had initially associated the term ‘‘power’’ with negative actions that were clearly visible, such as a teacher being sarcastic with a student or favoring some students over others. These students explained that their view of power had begun to evolve as a result of studying the techniques of power. One representative example is as follows: I am starting to accept that, as a teacher, I will be using techniques of power as an everyday part of my teaching. If you think of these techniques as negative, then you have to conclude that teaching is [fundamentally] negative. However, Gore says ‘‘Educating is about the teaching of norms—norms of behavior, of attitudes, of knowledge. Here, the productiveness of power would seem to be a fundamental precept of pedagogical endeavor’’ [p. 237]. I now see that I have the moral responsibility to act in certain ways in my ‘‘relations of power’’ with studentsy Analyzing these relations has

opened my eyes to something important that I had not seen before. As Gore says, the ‘‘functioning of power remains largely invisible in our daily practices, unless we are looking for it’’ [p. 248]. Again, the recognition of the inevitability of being involved in relations of power is productive, but the understanding that exercising power is caught up with a ‘‘moral responsibility’’ is especially insightful. The student seems to echo Gore’s argument that as educators we must work to identify which techniques of power ‘‘seem essential to pedagogical enterprise and which might be altered’’, and we must discover how we ‘‘might exercise power differently’’ for the purpose of ‘‘opening up spaces of freedom’’ in our relations with students (see Gore, p. 248). As these passages suggest, the project of studying techniques of power seems to have had a positive, productive effect on the students. About the method of taking up a film text in tandem with academic texts to inquire into an issue, many students noted that this was the first time that a film had been included as a central text in an education course, and nearly all of the students expressed that they found the experience both productive and enjoyable. One student, for example, wrote: Like most people, I love watching movies. So I enjoyed The Paper Chase as a ‘‘text,’’ as you say. What the movie did for me was make the techniques of power clearer, more understandable. Jenny Gore’s article was a good introduction, but the film drove the points home. Of course, what made them even more clear was your interpretations of them. Because you gave us your interpretation, I was able to reread it on my own time. This helped me to get a better grasp on how the techniques are carried out. A number of students also commented on how my interpretation of the selected scenes was a valuable element in the process of analyzing how techniques of power are enacted within pedagogical sites. What the film did for me was demonstrate [she is now quoting Gore’s quotation of Foucault

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here, p. 248] how ‘‘The exercise of powery incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult.’’ When I read that, I didn’t really get it. In viewing the movie, I thought Kingsfield was inciting Hart, inducing him to do his best, seducing him through his brilliance, and making his life easier and harder at different timesy Your ‘‘close reading’’ was as important as the film and the chapter by Gore, thoughy After reading it, I began interpreting the whole film according to techniques of power [in a subsequent viewing that she engaged in on her own]y I also interpreted classroom activities in the light of the techniques, too, which is probably the point you had in mind all along, right? In fact, it was indeed one of the points I ‘‘had in mind all along’’.

8. Conclusion In this article, I have described a pedagogical approach that involved drawing upon print and film texts to explore the issue of relations of power that the preservice teachers articulated in their reflective essays early in the semester. In particular, preservice teachers implicitly focused in these reflective essays on the many relations of power that they recognized as existing between teachers and principals, teachers and students, teachers and parents, and so on. In drawing upon films as pedagogical texts, I have engaged in a teaching practice shared by educators from disciplines outside of the field of education (Anderson, 1992; Boyatzis, 1994; Chambliss & Magakis, 1996; Dubeck, Moshier, & Boss, 1988; Fleming, Piedmont, & Hiam, 1990; Gold & Revill, 1996; LeBlanc, 1997; Michaud, 1997; Toman & Rak, 2000; Wood, 1998), and I have taken to heart the recommendations of those who have analyzed school films and have called for others to take them up as texts within a teacher preparation practice (Ayers, 1994; Brantlinger, 1999; Cohen, 1999; Dalton, 1999; Edelman, 1990; Farber & Holm, 1994a, 1994b; Mitchell & Weber, 1999; Resnick, 1996).

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I conceptualize this ‘‘techniques of power’’ project, as well as others I have designed around school films (Trier, 2001a, b, 2002, 2003), as attempting to do what Anne Phelan (2001) explains is typically not done in teacher education courses. Phelan argues that most teacher education programs and courses prepare teachers ‘‘to fit into existing patterns and structures of teaching, schooling and society’’. They play ‘‘an integrating rather than a radicalizing role’’. Phelan goes on to say that ‘‘teacher education maintains existing educational and social structures by teaching prospective teachers to assimilate and accommodate to existing ways of thinking and acting— dominant discourses—that are prevalent within a given context during a particular period in time’’ (p. 584). To counter such practices, Phelan calls for teacher educators ‘‘to consider how we can help prospective teachers to recognize the multiple discourses that shape and often restrict their thinking about experience and place’’ (p. 594). My overall intent with this project was to engage preservice teachers in critical reflections about how exercising power in relations of power with students is an inevitable aspect of teaching. Toward this end, the various activities of the project—reading academic pieces, discussing issues during seminars, analyzing a film text, drawing upon my close reading for analysis, and writing reflective essays—collectively came together to bring about a genuine discourse about techniques of power. As a result of the theoretical framework provided by Gore and the close reading and other techniques employed in the project, students clearly adopted a discourse of power in their written reflections. By the end of the semester, they were engaged in seminar discussions of ‘‘disciplinary power’’, of relations of power, and of techniques of power. They were deconstructing the power relationships embedded in the professional practices of their cooperating teachers, as when they problematized the use of marginalizing labels, and they also articulated critiques of system-wide practices, such as that of tracking. Most importantly, they explained how the discourse of power that they had begun to acquire would play an important role in shaping their own teaching practices, both during their student

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teaching and when they became full-time teachers. Exploring techniques of power and various relations of power aligns my work as a teacher educator with those (Phelan, 2001; Zeichner, 1987, 1992) who seek to prepare teachers who will enter the profession with a critical awareness and a commitment to cultivating discourses based on equity and justice to challenge those discourses that serve to reproduce the status quo.

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