CHAPTER SIX: APPLICATION OF EMPOWERMENT THEORY TO EDUCATION
6.2. THE APPLICATION OF EMPOWERMENT THEORY TO THE CONTEXT OF EDUCATION
6.2.4. Personality aspects of educational empowerment
The 38 item School Participant Empowerment Scale (Short and Rinehart, 1992) discriminated between a group of teachers currently involved in an empowering intervention and a control group. Factor analysis led to the identification of six factors of school empowerment, namely decision making, professional growth, status, self efficacy, autonomy and impact.
Anattempt at replication, however, cast some doubt on the validity of the scale, failing to confirm the original six sub-scales identified (Klecker and Loadman, 1998). The scale also appears to have poor content validity, omitting such issues as professional knowledge and the relationship between power and knowledge, both considered central to teacher empowerment in the literature (Maeroff, 1988 and Munns and Nunnery, 1993 both in Klecker and Loadman, 1998).Itthus appears that more items need to be included and further replication take place, before the scale can be considered a valid measure of teacher empowerment.
The 25 item Self Empowerment Index (Wilson, 1993) is based in part on Maslow's theory of self-actualisation and also on Block's (1987 in Wilson, 1993) theory of organisational
empowerment as involving an intra-psychic sense of autonomy and the expression thereof to others. The scale showed good discriminantv~ljdity,separating empowered teachers from those who were not. Exploratory factor analysis identified three factors of empowerment, namely an internal sense of autonomy, courage to take risks, and self-reflection. More work is needed, however, to confirm the reliability and validity of the measure.
Both measures represent important initial attempts to explore the measurement of
empowerment within an educational context although more work is required, to confirm their reliability and validity. Both measures are also very specific to the empowerment of teachers to contribute to educational transformation and thus could not be adapted for this study. Thus a new measure of empowerment as it relates to study behaviour was required.
universities achievement is often evaluated by comparison to one's peers thus profoundly affecting self esteem and self efficacy and feelings of mastery or helplessness. Educational institutions thus provide a valuable natural research context for the study of these aspects.
A number of studies link self efficacy to academic performance, including that of Bouffard- Bouchard (1990 in Bandura, 1997). Students with high self efficacy concerning their academic ability showed increases in academic performance, set higher goals for themselves and used a wider variety of study strategies than those of similar ability but with lower self efficacy levels.
Bandura (1997) advocates several factors to boost low self efficacy levels, including co- operative learning tasks and self evaluation rather than peer comparisons. He also advocates that learners set proximal, short term goals, which boost self efficacy and performance by breaking complex tasks into sub-tasks and providing standards so students can evaluate their performance. Intrinsic interest also boosts self efficacy and academic performance.
Peterson and Barrett (1987 in Petersonet al., 1993), also found a relationship between
academic performance and learned helplessness among students. Those who attributed failures to internal, stable and global causes showed poorer performance than students of matched ability levels who attributed failures to external, temporary and specific causes. Tendencies towards learned helplessness had an enduring effect, with helpless students less likely to seek academic advice than non-helpless students, leading to further poor performance. Learned helplessness could, however, be altered by academic counsellors who explicitly taught students to change the attributions for their failures (Wilson and Linville,1985 in Petersonet al., 1993).
Internal locus of control has also been linked to improved academic performance (Findley and Cooper, 1983 and Mooney, Sherman and Lo Presto, 1991). This makes intuitive sense as students who feel in control of their outcomes are likely to expend more effort to achieve success than those who feel that success is beyond their control. The effect is, however, a small one, with a mean of 0.18 found in a meta-analysis of 98 articles. Stronger effect sizes
were found for males, adolescents rather than young children or students, and in studies using scales specific to the academic context rather than generalised measures of control. No
difference in effect size was found for different race groups (Findley and Cooper, 1983).
The mediating influence of age, mentioned above, suggests that the effects of locus of control on academic performance are maximised during adolescence, but have little or no effect at tertiary level. This was confirmed in a study by Watkins (1987), who found no relation
between locus of control and academic performance at university level, suggesting that locus of control had become a stable personality factor by late adolescence.
Watkins (1987) did, however, find a significant positive relationship between internal locus of control and the use of an achieving learning style and a negative relation between internality and surface, rote styles of learning. This suggests that greater control is associated with learning styles more appropriate to the tertiary context. Watkins therefore advocates academic skills programmes emphasising autonomous learning and greater control of one's studies as a way of encouraging the shift from surface to achievement oriented learning.
A similar pattern to that of locus of control is identified for self esteem. In a meta-analysis, Hansford and Hattie (1982) found a small, positive relation between self esteem and academic performance, averaging at 0.212. This relationship also increased with age to adolescence, and then decreased for university students, and was also stronger when specific measures of self concept of academic ability rather than global self esteem measures were used. No difference in relationship strength was noted according to gender, but a stronger relationship was found for British, Australian, Canadian and white Americans than for Black subjects. In a similar study to that of Watkins (1987), Abouserie (1995) found a positive relationship between high self esteem and tendency to use deep, achieving learning styles among students, while those with low self esteem relied on rote learning. Academic skills programmes should therefore boost both self esteem and control in order to enhance the use of deep learning styles.
The above studies thus illustrate that a small, but significant relationship exists between academic performance and self efficacy and esteem, locus of control and learned helplessness.
Studies such as those ofSherman (1985 in Watkins, 1987) and Wi1son and Linville (1985 in Petersonet al., 1993) indicate the value of interventions aimed at boosting personality aspects of empowerment, as a way of improving academic performance. Academic skills programmes should therefore focus on the social and emotional development of students as well as their cognitive development, in a holistic manner. This should serve to boost students' self esteem and efficacy and sense of control, and thus encourage higher academic performance.
6.2.5. Barriers to educational empowerment:
While many benefits to empowerment exist, a few authors refer to barriers which potentially limit its efficacy. Increased assertiveness as a result of empowerment may, for example, lead to a lack of self discipline and a rigid insistence on one's own views, both of which inhibit the empowerment of others (Lazarus, 1985). Idealism and lack of awareness of the limitations to one's empowerment may also lead to disillusionment when faced with socio-political factors beyond one's control (Lazarus, 1985). Couto (1989) also mentions the need to be aware of the limitations of one's power to effect change, as do Bowen, Bahrick and Ens (1991) who argue that an empowering process must include an analysis of the costs and benefits of change, to highlight those factors that can't be changed by an empowerment process.
An important barrier to empowerment is the presence of pre-existing power differences between groups, as discussed by Cummins (1986) in section 6.2.1. Any organisational structure that gives one group greater access to information, skills and power acts against the empowerment of others. According to Perkins (1995), this constitutes the central paradox of empowerment, namely that attempts by one group to empower another often fail because the organisational context tries to preserve the power differences between the groups.
Serrano-Garcia (1984) considers this inability to alter pre-existing power relations to be a major stumbling block to empowerment in her analysis of a Puerto Rican community development project. If empowerment is defined purely in terms of an increased sense of personal control, then her results indicate that the community were empowered, gaining a new set of skills, a critical awareness of their context and a new sense of competence and
confidence. If the goal of the project was to directly challenge the prevailing ideologies of colonialism and Americanism, however, the project failed and may even have created an illusion that change is possible within an oppressive social context. Returning to Rappaport's (1987) definition of empowerment, true empowerment involves both an increased feeling of control, as well as actual participation in challenging power imbalances in society. For change to be really effective both aspects need to be the target of intervention.
Applied to the educational context, this suggests why attempts by universities, technikons and schools to include students in restructuring and transformation processes often fail. According to Gray, although they are consumers of educational products, students have the least power of all participants in an educational system: "I cannot, in the whole of 25 years of experience in education, recall an instance where the students have been able to exercise decisive and
significant influence over educational decisions" (1984, p. 112). Attempts at including them on transformation boards and other bodies, without providing them with skills in committee participation, access to information to make decisions, or power to influence the direction of change, reduces them to mere pawns. When their attendance is poor and their contribution limited, staff blame them for their lack of interest, diverting attention away from the structural causes of the problem, namely entrenched power inequities between staff and students.
Such issues form the focus of Gruber and Trickett's (1987) evaluation of the school board of a high school committed to pupil and parent empowerment. The board included pupils, parents and teachers and was established as the school's central decision making body. Evaluation revealed, however, that parental and pupil participation was superficial and had little effect on the running of the school. Issues dealt with were trivial and decisions dominated by teachers.
Factors contributing to the board's failure related to power imbalances between parents, pupils and teachers. Teachers had considerably more power on the board than parents or pupils due to their greater responsibility for school funding and administration. In addition, inequalities of knowledge existed, with teachers' full time presence at school giving them access to more information about the school, while parents had only second hand knowledge of school activities, through their children. Inequalities in decision making processes also existed. Their
educational expertise meant that teachers were more likely to bring decisions to the board and had greater control over decision making.
Gruber and Trickett (1987) therefore pose similar questions regarding the true nature of empowerment to those posed by Serrano-Garcia (1984). According to Zimmerman's (1995) notion of psychological empowerment, parents and pupils were empowered by participation on the board. They gained in confidence and control (intra-personal component). They also
developed relationships with teachers and learnt about the school's constraints and resources (interactional component). Their participation also had behavioural effects, allowing them to elect members onto the board and monitor the activities of staff. If empowerment includes real structural power to effect change, however, they were not empowered as pre-existing power relations between the three groups were not altered, and parents and pupils were not provided with sufficient resources to rise from their position at the bottom of the status hierarchy.
The debate concerning pre-existing power differences should be seen within the context of a .broader critique of empowerment theory as over-emphasising psychological growth and
individual development at the expense of broader power issues occurring at the organisational, community and societallevel (Newborough, 1992 a and b; Riger, 1993 and Speeret al., 1992).
The present study, despite a focus on individual skills development and psychological growth, does not dismiss such a criticism, or adopt a purely individual position on empowerment.
Instead it advocates the position adopted by Richet al. (1995) and discussed in the previous chapter, namely that institutional empowerment follows the empowerment and skills
development of the individuals who will participate in such wider change processes.
To be truly effective therefore, an empowerment intervention needs to achieve two things.
Opportunities must be provided for skills and self development to allow for an increased sense of control. At the same time, organisational or societal restructuring must ensure an elevation in the formal status of the previously disempowered group. Seen in this way, the current study and recent attempts at institutional transformation constitute two halves of the same process.
To be considered as empowerment in its purest form, both aspects are essential. The current attempt at the empowerment of students should therefore not be seen as a rejection of
institutional processes of change or endorsement of an individualist position, but rather should be seen within the context of institutional changes occurring simultaneously. Hence by
participating in relatively short term processes of empowerment such as the one on which this study is based, students gain increased confidence, a greater sense of control and valuable skills, which can then be fed into wider, long term processes of institutional development. In this way, the individual and social perspectives on empowerment are not viewed as
antagonistic, but rather are brought together as parts of the same process of transformation.
A further barrier to empowerment revealed in the above study relates to leadership. As discussed by Riger (1984), the commitment to an egalitarian structure by empowered organisations can prove problematic. On the above school board, formal hierarchical roles were resisted in an attempt to minimise power imbalances. This meant, however, that no one took responsibility for implementing decisions, thus contributing further to its failure. Hence a further paradox of empowerment is that strong leaders are needed to implement change, and yet the presence of leaders is assumed to imply a lack of empowerment and equality.
Evidence suggests, however, that structureless organisations become so immersed in process that they achieve little (Gruber and Trickett, 1987 and Riger, 1984). Inspired leaders,
however, can contribute much to the empowerment of the organisation as a whole, by advocating for the empowerment of others and encouraging their development (Maton and Salem, 1995).
The final barrier to empowerment I wish to discuss is the issue of skills development. As mentioned above (Kieffer, 1984), empowerment requires both psychological growth, with particular emphasis on such aspects as self esteem and feelings of control, as well as the development of skills such as assertiveness, time management and goal setting, all of which were developed in the current intervention.
According to Taylor and Burgess (1995) the development of autonomous, empowered learning requires training and orientation to specific skills. These skills are, however, often ignored as the provision of skills seems to imply that something is being given by someone in a superior position to those in an inferior, ignorant position.Itis also often assumed thatin a supportive environment, people automatically realise their potential for empowerment.
In evaluating Taylor and Burgess's (1995) social work course which sought to develop autonomous learning, however, students reported high anxiety as a result of being expected to take control of their learning without the appropriate skills development to achieve this:
I actually wanted someone to point me in the right direction rather than say 'go and find out for yourself ...Ifelt I was in the sea really and the people around me were also floating in the sea and no one really knew what we were doing
(student in Taylor and Burgess, 1995, p. 93).
Students therefore stressed the need for direct training in the requirements of autonomous learning as their previous educational experiences had not prepared them for this. Areas they requested training in included orientation to the specific expectations of lecturers, training in group discussion and time management skills.
Itthus became clear that taking control of one's learning requires a major change to existing passive learning habits. Revisions were therefore made to the course, including the
development of exercises on various aspects of autonomous learning and collaborative games . to build co-operative relations and introduce students to group processes. (Similar games were used in the empowerment programme on which the current thesis is based.) Orientation lectures were also held regarding the conceptual and theoretical basis of autonomous
learning. Further evaluation revealed that students responded positively to these changes and felt more confident regarding autonomous learning.
As other researchers have also found, (Capoor and Vakharia, 1995; McWhirter, 1991 and Serrano-Garcia, 1984) this study illustrates that empowerment involves more than a process of cognitive insights and enhanced self esteem. For most participants, empowerment involves new patterns of behaviour and a new set of skills. These should not, however, be taught in a didactic way, but rather should be facilitated in a participative manner, with participants selecting skills most appropriate to their particular needs. For this reason, Serrano-Garcia (1984), in the Puerto Rican project discussed above, developed skills through focussed participation in group meetings, rather than through formal training, which, she claims, would have emphasised the community's lack of skill and reliance on expert help.
The above studies thus reveal the application of empowerment theory to a wide range of educational contexts including preschool (Campos and Keatinge, 1984 in Cummins, 1986) school (Gruber and Trickett, 1987) and university (Maton and Salem, 1995 and Taylor and Burgess, 1995) settings, as well as to community and alternative forms of education (Lazarus, 1985 and "Participatory Learning", 1995). The fmal area for discussion is thus to outline how empowerment theory has informed the current study, before critically evaluating the theory and its application to education.