Re-working Empowerment as a theory for practice:

This paper explores power relations in the classroom and subsequently seeks to re-work empowerment as a theory for practice. The discussion is located in a practice setting where an intervention for school children with behaviour and concentration difficulties, delivered by the author, was researched as part of his doctoral thesis. The works of Michel Foucault, seen in this paper as a post-structuralist, are tied together with those of the pragmatist John Dewey in an effort to re-work an understanding of empowerment that can withstand current social work practice tensions of power and control. This theoretical argument is illustrated by referring to qualitative data gathered from vignette interviews conducted with the students at two time points in the research. The concluding position in this paper is one of seeing empowerment in a more robust manner that can incorporate a post-structuralist understanding of power relations and yet allow space for the possibility and development of human agency.