Power and Pedagogy: International Perspectives of Chinese and American Pedagogical Practices That Empower and Engage Students.

To ensure a student-centered campus, schools must integrate student empowerment in and out of the classroom. In China, this concept remains a novel idea. In the US, student empowerment outside of the classroom, for example, in student governance, is prevalent. However, faculty at-large still remains somewhat unaware that internal belief systems about power shape, not only the curriculum or content they are delivering, but also their choices of pedagogy. We assert that the internal political assumptions of an individual are manifested in the teaching styles selected by that individual. Little research exists to understand how individual faculty political perceptions correlate with classroom pedagogical practices that impact student learning. This paper provides a conceptual foundation for embarking upon empirical study of this fascinating phenomenon.