The Bind of Unilateral Power Dynamics and Youth Voice in School Politics

Abstract

Research has shown the value of including youth, especially minoritized students, in school- and district-level educational decision-making. However, power dynamics, as related to adultism, along with other inequities, are barriers to youth’s political influence. We elucidate these barriers by exploring the possible relationship between adult-adult power dynamics, on one hand, and levels of student voice in schools, on the other. Interviews with teachers and administrators about youth voice initiatives indicated that bounded rationality illuminates how limiting access to knowledge, a form of power, can impact educator decision-making. In addition, bounded rationality bolsters unilateral power structures and therefore curtails youth voice. However, we also found that building relational power between teachers and students and maneuvering beyond bounded rationality increases opportunities for youth voice.

Keywords

educational policy equity leadership politics of education

Education researchers have noted many school- and district-level benefits of supporting and including youth voice as it relates to local decision-making. For example, empowered youth often leverage their unique positionalities as students to advocate for decisions that positively influence their lives in school (Mitra, 2005). Youth involvement in decision-making about policies and practices has advanced educational equity in unique ways that are not possible without their input (Mansfield et al., 2012; Quijada Cerecer et al., 2013; Welton et al., 2014). Youth hold insider insights on inequities in schooling, especially youth who face injustice along lines of race, sexuality, gender, gender identity, language, immigration status, system involvement, dis/ability, and/or religion (e.g., Owens & Jones, 2004; Pech et al., 2020; Quijada Cerecer et al., 2013). Oftentimes, students with multiple minoritized identities are prioritized in conversations on educational equity, but are rarely included in meaningful ways (González et al., 2019; Salisbury et al., 2020; Welton et al., 2014). Despite normative exclusion from these conversations, youth have proposed a range of innovative policy recommendations at various levels, from the school level to the district level and beyond (Bertrand, Salinas et al., 2020; Cammarota & Romero, 2011). Research suggests that school and district leadership stands to gain significant perspective by fostering opportunities where youth use their voice as important stakeholders to advocate for themselves and their peers (Mitra & Gross, 2009; Quijada Cerecer et al., 2013).

However, power dynamics in and beyond schools can impact youth’s ability to contribute to educational decision-making authentically and impactfully (Brion-Meisels & Alter, 2018; Kohfeldt et al., 2011). Traditionally, power flows from the top down in schools and districts. For example, in a school, a principal holds greater power than the teachers and other staff, who hold more power than the students (Lovorn et al., 2012). This distribution of power is complicated by intersecting societal hierarchies along lines of race, social class, gender, gender identity, and more (Crenshaw, 1989). Scholarship (e.g., Conner & Rosen, 2015) indicates that it is important to examine normative power dynamics in schools to see how traditional notions of power can be subverted and transformed to welcome and encourage youth voice as a necessary catalyst to advance school- and district-level decision-making.

In examining power dynamics and politics as variables of interest, the research team leveraged the “Big P” and “little p,” politics framework to organize our understandings of power. According to Welton et al., politics can be understood as having two forms: Big P and little p. The research team operationalized “Big P” politics by drawing on Welton et al.’s (2016) understanding of the institutional context, which includes “dominant norms, beliefs, practices that are established school-wide” (p. 94). In addition, Big P politics include state institutions and governments (Janks, 2012; Kahne et al., 2013, as cited in Dye, 2014), such as school district and state educational decision-making. Little p politics correspond to the micropolitical context: the “interpersonal or micro-level conflict or cooperation” (Welton et al., 2016, p. 94). Thus, for the purposes of this study, power dynamics in schools can be organized through the dual lenses of Big P and little p politics.

Youth voice initiatives involve little p politics; however, they can impact Big P politics when youth are engaged in advocacy for institutional change. Scholarship has yet to fully flesh out the complexity of these power dynamics and local or institutional politics as it relates to youth voice. In order to understand and augment the influence of youth in educational decision-making, educational researchers must examine how diverse power structures and dynamics in schools can impact youth agency, student voice, and teacher-student relationships. Our study addresses this area by examining the views of school adults who interacted with youth voice initiatives. Through an analysis of interviews with these adult educators, we ask the following research question: How do hierarchical power structures in schools influence power dynamics and the actualization of student voice efforts?

In addressing these questions, we combine Big and little p politics with the theoretical concepts of unilateral and relational power and bounded rationality to understand how traditional power dynamics in schools impact youth voice initiatives. In concert, these theoretical frameworks can help education researchers understand more about power structures that impact school- and district-level decision-making. We hope that by exposing catalysts and barriers to incorporating youth voice in educational decision-making, we can begin to identify and reshape possibilities for youth to have a greater say in decisions that directly affect them. In this article, we present an overview of related literature followed by a description of the study methods and our findings. We close by offering next steps for education researchers and leaders on approaches to (circum)navigate school hierarchies predicated upon unilateral power structures.

Theoretical Framework

To better understand our data, we bring together two theoretical strands, both of which are connected to Big P and little p politics: bounded rationality, a concept originating in the field of economics and behavioral science, and unilateral and relational power. We pair these theories to gain a nuanced understanding of how educators involved in youth voice initiatives make decisions with students and administrators. In schools, there are clear power hierarchies where youth, as students, have the most limited powers of self-determination, with teachers and administrators positioned with successively increased power. When we combine bounded rationality with conceptions of unilateral and relational power, we are able to nuance our understanding of educator decision-making within youth voice initiatives, given these hierarchical structures. Bounded rationality accounts for the environment as well as cognitive and emotional limitations of decision-making, and unilateral and relational power center the role of power structures.

Bounded Rationality

Bounded rationality is a theory that helps scholars gain a better understanding of the way people and organizations make decisions (Simon, 1997). Traditionally, economists have thought of humans as rational and self-maximizing when it comes to decision-making. However, Herbert Simon introduced the principle of bounded rationality to provide an alternative model of decision-making behavior that accounts for time, information, and cognitive, and environmental constraints that may lead people away from optimizing their decision-making capacity (Simon, 1997). Overall, this theory challenges traditional economic models of decision-making that assume people’s decisions are “perfectly” rational, and instead posits that we often make adequate, but not optimal, decisions, as limited by constraints, such as power-based constraints.

Bounded rationality has four principles: the principle of intended rationality, the principle of adaptation, the principle of uncertainty, and the principle of trade-offs (Jones, 2002). The principle of intended rationality means that people often fail to achieve their goals due to the interplay of cognitive, informational, emotional, and environmental factors. The principle of adaptation means human thought and understanding adjust to the environment or problem of focus. The principle of uncertainty indicates that people have difficulty calculating probabilities of various outcomes of a decision, meaning that uncertainty is an intrinsic part of decision-making. The principle of trade-offs says that people set “aspiration levels”—or levels of satisfactory or “good enough” outcomes—when making decisions. Simon (1997) refers to this “good enough” decision-making as “satisficing,” choosing “an alternative that meets or exceeds specified criteria, but that is not guaranteed to be either unique or in any sense the best” (p. 295). In essence, people may select the first option that meets that benchmark. If a decision outcome fails to meet aspirational levels, the decision makers will continue to analyze or compromise their aspirations.

Bounded rationality is typically used in the study of economics of behavior science as an alternative model to the homo economicus model, and we transplant it to the educational arena. To illustrate how this theory can be applied to youth voice in the school context, let’s take the hypothetical case of Ms. Michel, a high school algebra teacher who is doing a youth voice project with her after-school math club. Her principal has asked that her project address a specific state curricular standard, but her students want to alter the curriculum to focus on diverse mathematicians. Ms. Michel, a new teacher, is unsure if she should give agency to members of her math club to choose their project or mandate the project suggested by the principal. The principle of intended rationality points to how her decision is limited by her environment and work obligations. The principle of adaptation is illustrated by her ability to choose either a student-centered project or a pre-determined project created by administration. The principle of uncertainty suggests that Ms. Michel, as a new teacher, may not know of the possible outcomes of making decisions that center students’ best interests, as opposed to following the principal’s guidance. The principle of trade-offs indicates that Ms. Michel will have to make a decision that is “good enough”—perhaps appeasing both students and the principal—or she will have to compromise in achieving that aspiration level based on the information, resources, and structures in her bounded reality.

As shown by this hypothetical case, bounded rationality helps scholars understand the conditions that limit our ability to make optimal decisions for ourselves and the organizations we serve. Bounded rationality examines the cognitive, environmental, power-based and emotional constraints to examine how these factors may improve or inhibit our decision-making capacities. As is evident, bounded rationality can be influenced by either Big P or little p politics. In the hypothetical case, little p politics—the interactions of the principal and the teacher—are central. However, Big P politics also play a role, situating the principal in a hierarchical role above the teacher and influencing the push for a project focused on a state standard. Thus, the lens of bounded rationality helps us examine the way teachers make decisions with their administrators and how these decisions impact youth voice in educational decision-making

Unilateral and Relational Power

The concepts of unilateral and relational power are often used in studies of community organizing and school-parent relationships. One of these is unilateral power, which “is the capacity to influence, guide, adjust, manipulate, shape, control, or transform the human or natural environment in order to advance one’s purposes” (Loomer, 1976, p. 17). This can be viewed as the “power over” others, such as administrators’ power over students (Welton et al., 2016).

The other concept is relational power (Loomer, 1976; Warren, 2005). This is power “with” others or, youth’s “power to” have a say in school decisions (Welton et al., 2016). Relational power is “the capacity both to influence others and to be influenced by others,” “both a giving and a receiving” (Loomer, 1976, p. 20). Thus, people can multiply their power as they come together and sometimes cross societal hierarchies. For example, the potential of relational power can be seen in scholarship on community organizing (Fernández & Paredes Scribner, 2018; Freelon, 2018). Also, some studies of school-family relationships provide insight, such as those of Ishimaru and her colleagues (Ishimaru, 2020; Ishimaru et al., 2016). They have studied initiatives designed to foster equitable collaboration between schools and “nondominant” families. Though difficult, this type of collaboration is possible through relational power across hierarchies (Ishimaru, 2020). Warren (2005) emphasizes that relational power may be necessary to make change in schools, considering the limited capacity of schools to make change.

Similar to Welton et al. (2016), we apply the conceptions of unilateral and relational power to the study of youth voice. We view relational power—collective, reciprocal engagement, and the strengthening of mutual connections—as a potential pathway to heighten the influence of youth in schools by disrupting the boundedness of rationality in school decision-making. Returning to the hypothetical case of Ms. Michel, we see that her choices are not just bound by information, the environment, and her own experience, but also by the power dynamics that exist. If Ms. Michel chooses to follow the command of her administrator, she will succumb to unilateral power, which involves both little p politics (the relationship between the principal and the teacher) and Big P politics (the situatedness of the relationship within district and state governance, involving specific norms and practices). However, if she chooses to support the student-initiated project, she will enact relational power, which is located within the realm of little p politics, but influenced by Big P politics, through the norms and practices of the school and district, as enforced by the principal. In addition, the positionalities of Ms. Michel, the principal, and the students—including their race, gender, gender identity, and more—also influence how this case would play out. In other words, these positionalities, within our inequitable society structured by racism and other forms of oppression, are always salient.

Literature Review

We ground our study in literature on the power dynamics in schools and student voice initiatives. These two bodies of literature provide us a foundation upon which to better understand the data we collected, specifically the relationship between school-level and youth voice power relations.

Power Dynamics in Schools

Schools are nested in unique positions where Big P politics—at the district/educational management organization (EMO), state, and federal levels—play a significant role (Sampson, 2019; Welton et al., 2016). Despite the great influence of Big P politics, which also include foundation and market-based players (Marsh et al., 2021), little p politics characterize the daily life in schools. In the everyday reality of schooling, individuals’ intersecting positionalities along lines of race, gender, sexuality, and much more shape their differing experiences facing injustice or benefiting from it (Crenshaw, 1989; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). This intersectionality plays out in little p politics, as seen in study of a youth voice initiative, when conflict arose as white students refused to acknowledge their Black peers’ experiences with racism (Welton et al., 2016). In addition, a key aspect of individuals’ positionalities is their institutional role, as student, teacher, administrator, etc. (Bertrand, Brooks et al., 2020). Since power plays an important role in understanding how diverse school actors come together, it is important to understand how power dynamics unfold in school relationships.

One of the entrenched features of schools is students’ position at the bottom of the hierarchy. Within such a structure, it is not surprising that adults may view youth as inferior. This belief is an aspect of “adultism,” encompassing “behaviors and attitudes based on the assumption that adults are better than young people, and entitled to act upon young people without their agreement” (Bell, 2010, p. 115). This ideology demobilizes youth agency as adults subordinate or dismiss students’ ideas (Conner et al., 2016), socializing youth to accept hegemonic systems that demoralize or marginalize them (Bettencourt, 2020). In schools, youth, positioned as students, are expected to be largely dependent upon teachers and other school adults (DeJong & Love, 2015). Adult dominance can saturate not only interactions within educational settings (little p politics), but also institutions and the curriculum (Big P politics; Bertrand, Brooks et al., 2020). Adults’ oppression of youth often intersects with racism, as shown, for instance, in a case in which white district leaders thwarted the goals of a group of youth of color while simultaneously using the group as “a prop” to bolster the district’s image (Salisbury et al., 2020).

While students occupy the lowest rung in a school, principals are positioned at the highest, though they contend with district/EMO and state mandates from above. The principal holds the key role in shaping a school’s goals and agenda (Hallinger & Heck, 2002; Mombourquette, 2017), meaning that they/she/he can allow the goals to be co-constructed or can leverage their authority to block others’ agendas. Principals also hold much sway over the school climate (Allen et al., 2015; Gülşen & Gülenay, 2014; Price, 2012, 2015). When school leaders wield authoritarian power, the result can be a climate of mistreatment, workplace bullying, or deteriorating health (Thomas, 2017). On the other hand, distributed leadership among school staff has been shown to be especially positive for school climate (Bellibas & Liu, 2018). Indeed, the principal’s cultivation of a school climate centering teacher collaboration and decision-making—relational power—positively influences students’ academic outcomes (Supovitz et al., 2010). However, we are not aware of research such as ours, which seeks to link the power dynamics between administrators and teachers to possibilities for youth leadership.

Power Dynamics in Student Voice Initiatives

As we touched on briefly in the introduction, youth voice encompasses a range of ways that youth can influence or weigh in on educational decisions. Since the 1990s, research on youth voice, also called student voice, has surged, encompassing a range of conceptual frameworks and approaches (Conner & Rosen, 2015; Gonzalez et al., 2017; Mitra, 2005). The goals of youth voice are

(1) to share students’ perspectives on their educational experiences with adults; (2) to call for reform that the students feel will better address the learning needs of themselves and their peers; and (3) to change the social construction of students in the school or in the school system. (Conner & Rosen, 2015, p. 3)

Mitra and Gross (2009) proposed the “pyramid of student voice,” with “being heard” on the bottom of the triangle, representing the most basic form of voice, “collaborating with adults” occupying the middle portion, and “building capacity for leadership” at the top, representing “an explicit focus on enabling youth to share in the leadership of the student voice initiative” (p. 524). Mansfield et al. (2012) reconceptualized this pyramid, resulting in the “student voice continuum,” which has “students as data source” at the bottom of the triangle, below “being heard,” the addition of “students as co-researchers” in the same section as “collaborating with adults,” and at the top, “undiscovered territory of student voice possibilities.” Similarly, Hart (1992) proposed that children’s participation in decision-making can range from adult manipulation to children initiating shared decisions with adults. These scholars also demonstrated that forms of youth voice are contextually situated within power hierarchies. In this way, the many forms of youth voice are shaped by Big P politics—such as related to the position of a student group in relation to district mandates—while also subject to little p politics in day-to-day interactions.

Youth voice initiatives often aim to rise above little p politics to decrease hierarchies of race, sexuality, gender, institutional position and more. One type of youth voice initiative is youth participatory action research (YPAR), a community-based, participatory form of transformative social justice research (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Caraballo et al., 2017). YPAR involves youth and adults working together to conduct research about issues directly affecting the lives of the youth and challenges the hierarchy of power that subjugates student voice as optional or deficient (Domínguez, 2021; González et al., 2019; Quijada Cerecer et al., 2013; Welton et al., 2014). One of the principles of YPAR, according to Rodríguez and Brown (2009), is that it involves authentic collaboration with adults that builds on the knowledge of the youth researchers. For instance, as shown by Kohfeldt et al. (2011), through YPAR, students can become a vital part of determining the policies and practices that most affect them, instead of only principals and teachers. Other student voice initiatives include student advisory councils and the addition of student members to school boards (Conner et al., 2016; Mattheis et al., 2018).

However, student voice initiatives, such as YPAR, entail inherent tensions related to little p power dynamics because these initiatives are often viewed as having competing goals: youth development, on one hand, and the advancement of youth influence in policies and practices, on the other (Brion-Meisels & Alter, 2018). Thus, egalitarian student voice initiatives can be very difficult to achieve because educators must find the right balance of guidance and support that doesn’t overshadow student agency (Mansfield et al., 2012; Mirra & Rogers, 2016). Instead of telling students the answers, facilitators ideally help youth gain deeper understandings of how to mobilize learning into a transformative praxis and social justice action by deconstructing their unique personal learning practices and community histories (Langhout et al., 2014). This can be quite a difficult task because it challenges pre-existing school roles, routines and expectations by redefining power sharing practices with youth. For instance, Rubin and colleagues (2017) demonstrate the difficulty of putting YPAR into the school day, in that the teachers of YPAR classes are forced to grade the youth while also working toward more equitable relationships. In addition, the tensions related to formal power hierarchies unfold within societal contexts of structural racism and other forms of injustice (Bertrand, Brooks et al., 2020). Thus, depending on the positionalities of the youth and school staff, the tensions may be further exacerbated.

Nonetheless, in spaces where power is often hoarded and coveted, YPAR and other student voice initiatives encourage facilitators and participants to engage in a practice of “power-sharing” (Pech et al., 2020). Power sharing—relational power—can ameliorate contentious little p politics and create the space for teachers, administrators, districts, students, and communities to co-create more equitable spaces where everyone can learn. For this study, the literature on power dynamics in schools and student voice initiatives helps us to understand how the hierarchical differences of position and power impact education decision-making and relationships within the top-down system of federal, state, district, and school policies and politics.

Methodology

The research team—the authors of this article—conducted a qualitative, interview-based study that consisted of both face-to-face and Zoom interviews (Brenner, 2006). Our goal was to speak to adult educators—teachers and administrators—on their experiences with and perceptions of youth voice initiatives taking place in their schools and districts. Interviews took place during the 2019 to 2020 school year; however, our conversations focused on events leading up to and following a local youth research conference in the previous academic year. This conference, held in a Southwestern city in the United States in Spring 2019, featured youth presenters from local high schools and middle schools who discussed social justice research they had conducted. All of our interviewees had attended and most had sponsored student organizations that presented at the youth conference. In total, we conducted 15 interviews with 12 participants, interviewing each participant once, with the exception of three teachers. We asked to conduct follow-up interviews with these three participants because they were each engaged in youth voice-related efforts that extended beyond the conference and into the data collection period. Each interview ranged from 30 minutes to 1 hour. Interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed.

Positionality

The research team, the three authors of the paper, inhabit a range of positionalities. The first author identifies as a biracial (Puerto Rican and white), cis-gender, heterosexual woman, and doctoral candidate at Arizona State University. The second author is a Black, queer, disabled, Haitian-American doctoral student at Arizona State University. The third author is a white, cis-gender woman and university professor, and one of the co-organizers of the youth research conference. She had already been an acquaintance of several of the 12 participants prior to the data collection period. We presume that the third author’s positionality as a university professor, conference co-organizer, and acquaintance of some the conference-goers led many of the participants to agree to be in the study. A consideration of this relationship led us to avoid including questions in the interview protocol asking participants about their views of the conference, instead focusing on the youth voice initiatives that led to their participation in it. In this way we sought to mitigate participants’ possible discomfort and the possible skewing of the data..

Study Context and Participants

Our sample of 12 participants included eight middle or high school teachers, two K-8 school administrators, and one district administrator. In addition, we interviewed one college professor who had been a high school teacher in the previous school year (see Table 1). All participants, except for the district administrator and one teacher (Cynthia and Peter), had come to the conference along with students who had presented research there. We cannot provide specific information about the racial/ethnic positionalities of the participants as individuals for confidentiality reasons. However, overall, there were seven participants of color, including two Black and four Latinx participants, in addition to five white participants. Abigail, Beatriz, and Peter worked at majority-white schools, while all other school-level participants served schools with majority Latinx populations. The district administrator served a district in which white students were the largest group but did comprise the majority.

Table 1.

Participant Table.

Pseudonym	School setting	School position	Student voice programs
Abigail	Charter school serving grades 5-12	Teacher	Youth research club focused on multicultural literature
Beatriz	High school	Teacher	Youth diversity club that researched student response to a diversity assembly
Cynthia	School district office	District administrator	District-wide youth equity program
Diego	High school	Teacher	Youth research in the classroom curriculum
Lisa	High school	Teacher at the time of the conference; current university faculty	Youth research in the classroom curriculum
Luis	Elementary school	School administrator	Youth research club (sponsored by a teacher at his school)
Melissa	High school	Teacher	Youth research club focused on the experiences of Muslim students
Miranda	High school	Teacher	Youth research club focused on multicultural literature and curriculum
Peter	High school	Teacher	Youth equity program
Rebecca	Elementary school	School administrator	Student council
Rocio	High school	Teacher	Youth research club focused on school discipline
Teresa	High school	Teacher	Black Student Union

The student voice programs and efforts varied significantly across the study sample, including youth initiatives focused on advocating for the rights of underrepresented and historically excluded students, local campus issues and events, and other youth research agendas. For example, Miranda, a high school teacher, worked with students and the librarian to forge new pathways to provide options for culturally relevant literature outside of the prescribed district curriculum. Also, Rebecca, an administrator at a majority Latinx K-8 school, described the process and outcomes of her collaboration with students in the student council to organize a school concert event. Overall, all of the participants provided insight into how youth voice was heard and responded to within their schools and districts.

Analysis

The first phase of analysis consisted of the research team/authors open coding three transcripts while taking notes on themes and patterns (Saldaña, 2013). The three transcripts were chosen because they reflected a spectrum of themes and topics. We then met as a group to create one cohesive set of inductive codes based upon our individual open coding. Some of the inductive codes included: teacher-admin relationships, pushback/barriers, adults learning from youth, and response to youth voice. We also created a set of deductive codes based on relevant literature. For instance, informed by Hart (1992), Mitra and Gross (2009), and Mansfield et al. (2012), we created codes capturing the nuances of various types of youth voice, such as youth-initiated and directed decision-making.

Next, we conducted an analysis using the coding system we created. We, the research team/authors, coded all of the transcripts in MAXQDA software, with most transcripts coded twice, by two of us. Throughout the interview and coding process, the team also wrote analytic memos (Saldaña, 2013) to reflect on observations and trends occurring in the data set. After the coding in MAXQDA was complete, we created a spreadsheet to record instances in which interviewees described examples of interactions with youth or school/district adults, coding each within the spreadsheet as unilateral power and/or relational power.

Findings

Our findings suggest that educators, in their work with youth, replicated and/or resisted power structures within their respective school/district environments and classrooms. The majority of educators in our study explicitly reported ways their power and ability to make decisions at school was bounded by power- and information-based hierarchies that have the potential to inhibit self-maximizing capabilities. Based on the interview data collected from our 12 participants, we found eight people who reinforced unilateral power at their school, nine people who enacted relational power, with five people who did both. (Each category is not mutually exclusive.) The eight educators who replicated and/or reinforced unilateral power reinforced a top-down dissemination of power where power decreases as position in the hierarchy descends (e.g., how power is disseminated in education via its various constituents: federal > state > district > administrators > teachers > students). The nine people who enacted relational power described instances where adult school leaders and youth resisted the unilateral power dynamics within the system by creating their own power through fostering relationships with fellow administrators, teachers, and youth. Lastly, the five people who did both alluded to ways they both reinforced unilateral power and enacted relational power. These power dynamics, as related to formal positions and seniority, were further complexified by intersecting societal forms of injustice, such as racism and adultism.

In our study, we found that bounded rationality explains why some members of the school system struggle to make self-maximizing decisions and remain at the bottom of the hierarchy, specifically teachers and students. In order to better understand the politics of youth voice, we argue in this paper that it is imperative to examine the experiences of teacher voice, as well, because it may prove to be an indicator of the types of school climates and relationships that provide opportunities for youth leadership. We also found power-based hierarchies not only bind teacher and youth access to knowledge but can also bind their capacity to navigate school power dynamics, given the roles and expectations assigned to them. We offer three overarching conclusions:

Bounded rationality illuminates how limiting access to knowledge, a form of power, can impact educator decision-making.

Bounded rationality bolsters unilateral power structures and therefore curtails youth voice.

Building relational power between teachers and students and maneuvering beyond bounded rationality increases opportunities for youth voice.

Below we organize our findings into two sections to illustrate the relationship between bounded rationality and unilateral power structures, on the one hand, and the relationship between bounded rationality and relational power, on the other.

The Bind of Bounded Rationality and Unilateral Power

Bounded rationality works in tandem with unilateral power, meaning that school stakeholders’ ability to make rational, self-maximizing decisions and contribute to school change is undermined by authority and limited access to information. Such top-down diffusion of power ultimately limits opportunities for teacher and youth voice in school decision-making across Big P and little p politics. Below we explore bounded rationality in the context of unilateral power across two domains: (a) teacher-administrator relationships; and (b) teacher-student relationships. Ultimately, we illustrate constrained opportunities for youth voice in the context of unilateral power unchecked by efforts to break the confines of the accompanying bounded rationality.

Teacher-administrator relationships

Several teachers commented on the unilateral power relations between teachers and administrators and also the knowledge-based hierarchies, as shown in and also reinforced by their bounded rationality. For example, Miranda, a teacher at a majority Latinx high school, described how administrators are “far removed” from current classroom practices and dynamics. She also critiqued how the hierarchies can limit how information is transmitted between levels and can even hamper a teacher’s ability to decide if those actions are best for her classroom.

I’ve always been very critical in terms of education that most decisions are made from the top down. And that really bothers me because I feel you have these people who are often very far removed from the classroom or haven’t taught in years get to tell teachers what to do. They’re the ones who go to those really expensive professional developments and they get their hotels and all this stuff, and they spend thousands of dollars at these conferences and they learn this information that never gets passed down to us, but they can make these decisions and tell us what to do.

Above, Miranda explained how teachers at her school experience top-down decision-making; specifically, how administrators attended external training to acquire resources and high-status information that is not shared with teachers. What Miranda does not mention is the fact that, though school leaders have easy access to high-status information, they often have little information about the everyday experiences of youth, information that is not often considered legitimate. In Miranda’s telling, the newly gained elite knowledge was used to make decisions and enforce agendas over or for teachers, not with teachers. For instance, Miranda later shared that the administrators returned to school to organize and lead teacher professional development to execute a new program without any conferral or collaborative discussion over whether the teachers believe the program would be beneficial to them or the students. In this way, Miranda’s comment suggests that, due to knowledge and power hierarchies, teacher decision-making was minimized while administrators (who are higher on the hierarchy) made decisions on behalf of teachers and students without their input. Miranda implied that school leaders, in their decision-making, leveraged their access to information from professional development conferences, whereas teachers’ minimal access to that same high-status information stunts their ability to contribute to school decision-making. Also, Miranda’s commentary points to the ways that bounded rationality and also Big P politics may shape dominant beliefs and practices school-wide.

Rocio, a high school teacher, contended with similar hierarchical teacher-administrator relationships in a semi-rural school. Specifically, she described how her attempts to challenge and resist unilateral decision-making were received by school leaders. Rocio pointed out how her voice as a teacher is heard or valued only when it doesn’t affect administrators’ agendas:

. . .if it’s something that’s going to make change in policies or the way that we do things, then it’s not going to happen because the district is “working on it,” right? But when it comes to something that’s, “Hey, let me go on this field trip” or “Let me do this,” it’s like, “Cool. You’re not really affecting how I’m running things, so you can do that. But once it affects, as a principal, how I’m running the show, then it’s not going to happen.”

Rocio’s comments suggest that, while teachers may receive support from a district on low-risk school activities (e.g., planning a field trip or school event), teachers may not receive the same support when advocating for school policy or practice changes, especially, in this case, when administrator and teacher agendas are incongruent. This quote illustrates how Rocio’s attempts to influence Big P politics were institutionally blocked, yet she was offered more leeway by the school leader to participate in little p politics at a micro-level. Though she didn’t make the connection, we conjecture that this authoritarian atmosphere constrained the possibilities for the student group she led—which researched school discipline—to have an impact. Overall, Rocio’s comment, like Miranda’s, could be considered an acknowledgment of knowledge-based hierarchies in that she is aware how her principal designates who has the power to contribute to educational decisions (low-stakes versus high-stakes) based on hierarchical position (e.g., allowing Rocio to decide on a field trip location versus contributing to policy/practice discussions). By proxy, limiting teacher inclusion in these conversations binds knowledge, which limits teacher agency to assist administrators to make school-wide, Big P decisions. As a result, knowledge- and power-based hierarchies reinforced unilateral power, which led to knowledge and information decreasing as power decreased. This is an important observation because bounded rationality illustrates how decision-making can be limited by environmental, computational, and hegemonic factors.

School hierarchies are established by top-down power systems that can lead teachers and students to accept their lesser status in the hierarchy and internalize self-limiting beliefs on their ability and capacity to influence school policies and practices. The metaphor of water was referred to by some of the participants when describing such movement of power between state/district/school entities. For example, teachers have two choices: swim in the direction of the current or swim in resistance to the current. For example, Peter, a teacher at a suburban high school, describes how mandates for a new equity program were issued in his school district. In this case, Peter highlights the principle of intended rationality, how teachers try to do the best they can with the information they are given by superiors.

But then the district office, when they tell principals to do this and principals tell teachers to do this. I’m learning a lot about the politics of trying to do something like this [district equity program] because, for us [teachers], we’re just going with the flow.

Specifically, he describes how he and fellow teachers choose to “go with the flow” for two reasons. First, teachers are learning about the program and politics from administrators who are passing down a watered-down version of the information. As a result, teachers’ bounded rationality helps minimize potential resistance to school district and administrator programing and agendas. Second, “to go with the flow” is easier than to swim against the current. When a teacher’s rationality is bounded, it can also influence teachers to feel their ability to contribute to school/district decision-making is bounded as well.

Eight of the study participants in this study detailed similar experiences with hierarchical teacher-administrator relationships and described how the power differential bounded teacher voice. With these participants, we saw struggles with challenging or conforming to the knowledge- and power-based hierarchies, across Big P politics, that reinforced unilateral administrator power over teachers. By keeping administrators in a position to have more knowledge and power, the school environment upheld unilateral power while bounding teacher rationality. Below we illustrate the connection between teacher-administrator and student-teacher relationships, demonstrating that the former may be an indicator of opportunities for youth voice.

Teacher-student relationships

The power dynamics that exist among teacher-administrator relationships may trickle-down and be reflected in teacher-student relationships. We use the imagery of the words “trickle-down” intentionally to depict two characteristics: (a) trickle-down shows hierarchical flow from top to bottom; and (b) how power diminishes as your position in the hierarchy lowers. In other words, when power trickles down it illustrates how less power is shared between, for instance, a teacher-student relationship than an administrator-teacher relationship within a unilateral power structure. For example, Miranda, explained the pressure to submit to administrator agendas despite her personal beliefs and vocalized resistance against them:

I feel like the curriculum in general tends to get a lot of us angry because curriculum decisions are often made from the top down. And so we’ve all been saying, “Don’t do this. We hate this. This doesn’t work.” But they keep doing it and they’re not really listening. So, I even found myself guilty of this when I approached my classroom. I’m like, “Okay guys. We have to take this test.” They’re like, “Oh another one?” I’m like, “Please. Just take it. I’ll give you credit just for taking it and trying.”

As is clear from her commentary, Miranda felt forced to replicate or “trickle down” the school power structures in her classroom (e.g., standardized test administration), even when she didn’t agree with the district directives. In other words, Miranda felt the need to enact the principal and district agendas and plead with students to comply with district tests despite her own conflicting personal beliefs. More than half of participants provided similar accounts describing instances where teacher-administrator relationships were reflected in teacher-student relationships. Miranda showcases how school politics and hierarchical relationships with administrators not only limited her decision-making as a teacher, but “guilted” her into the predicament to bind youth decision-making as well.

It is relevant to note that Miranda’s ability to resist a mandated standardized test is minimal without it impacting her job security, and it is highly unlikely that any relational power could not have overcome this specific administrator directive in a short amount of time. This conundrum explains how a teacher’s position is a unique one because, while they have some autonomous power in their classroom and in how they navigate relationships with students, they are also managed by school leaders positioned higher in the school hierarchy and are compelled to enact district, state, and federal policies.

When a teacher’s decision-making ability is limited by power-based hierarchies and constrained access to information, it may cause them to experience confusion about their roles and students’ roles in the classroom, which, in turn, can impact teacher-student relationships. For instance, Rebecca described the trade-off dilemma surrounding teacher and student shared decision-making in the classroom:

So you have to kind of build up to it. And I see the teachers that are less willing to hear student voices, the ones that also struggle with classroom management. So a lot of it would come down to the teachers to be able to establish that expectation and understanding of roles before they could collaborate with students.

Rebecca highlighted that teachers who struggle with classroom management are often more likely to struggle to build student relationships that lend themselves to youth voice. These teachers may also be less likely to center egalitarian teaching and learning practices because of their underdeveloped relationships with students. Despite the teacher’s greater influence to manage little p politics in the classroom context, the top-down power diffusion may have also reinforced adultist teaching practices through pre-existing school roles, routines, and expectations dictated by Big P politics. However, it is also important to note that some senior teachers are accustomed to Big P politics and school hierarchies so they are less willing or interested in listening to and/or incorporating youth voice altogether. In addition, some other educators in this study reported feeling role confusion related to their positions as adults and how to effectively incorporate practices that promote the inclusion of youth voice. The quote above illustrates how power-based hierarchies uphold unilateral power, and impact how teachers collaborate with students. Rebecca’s conflict represents the principle of the trade-offs, a choice between student voice and/or allegiance to the traditional way of approaching K-12 education.

However, role clarity can be equally problematic and conflicting across school leaders. Luis, a Latinx school administrator, described his personal definition of the role of the “adult” in the classroom.

. . .so adults set the parameters, right? The role of the adult is to make sure you understand what the end game is. What is the ultimate goal? It could be a very general goal, it could be a very specific goal, but understand what the end of the goal is, and what are the guidelines, what are the boundaries, right? Ultimately those boundaries are set by me, actually by the state department and my superintendent and me and that whole construct going down. Our school has been set by me. Adults have to understand what all that means, right?

Luis emphasizes how boundaries are set by state and district leaders, then onto school administrators, who then places those boundaries onto teachers, who ultimately pass along the mandates to create boundaries for students in their classrooms. While Luis exhibited role clarity about the responsibilities of each school adult, it seemed to reinforce the top-down unilateral power structure and an adultist orientation toward school collaboration. Both of these limit the potential for student and teacher voice in school decision-making.

The examples provided above depict how bounded rationality can be a lens that helps education researchers and practitioners identify knowledge/power/environmental limitations that impact their decision-making, especially as it relates to youth. These examples show how teacher-administrator relationships often reflect and perpetuate similar teacher-student dynamics. This “trickle-down effect” that happens amongst administrators, teachers, and students explains how knowledge and power reduces in proportion to one’s position and seniority in the larger school hierarchy.

Building Relational Power for Teacher and Student Voice

When teachers and/or students feel they have limited knowledge or agency (as related to bounded rationality), they can leverage relational power as a way to maneuver beyond knowledge/power-based hierarchies. We found that building relational power was used by teachers and students to gain power across the Big P and little p school politics at play across their environments. In other words, teachers and students built power through interpersonal relationships to increase social capital as they navigated unilateral power structures and practices at both institutional and interpersonal levels. In this section we explore how the confines of bounded rationality and unilateral power dynamics were undermined by: (a) teacher-initiated relational power and (b) student-initiated relational power.

Teacher-initiated relational power

Some educators in our study sought alternative pathways to resist unilateral power through relationship building. For example, Miranda utilized relational power by working with the librarian to provide students with options for independent book studies that were not on the “district-approved list.”

I didn’t want to teach [a book]. . . that was on the district-approved list. So rather than that, I had them all do an independent book. I took them to the library and they all picked out their own young adult novel. I felt whether or not it actually was there, I felt like, “Oh, maybe they [administrators] have their eye on me more.”

Miranda admitted feeling surveilled by administrators after teaching a book off the school district-approved list. Consequently, she feared the repercussions and ramifications of continuing to resist the unilateral power structure and existing Big P school politics. However, instead of conforming to administrators’ expectations, Miranda was able to re-strategize how to resist existing power dynamics by partnering with a colleague to empower youth to make educational decisions in her classroom. By doing so, Miranda was able to detour the roadblocks of the hierarchies imposed by her superior to make a more self-maximizing decision. Specifically, Miranda built relational power by leveraging the expertise and talents of her fellow educator. While she only challenged Big P politics within the micropolitical context of her classroom, Miranda exemplified how such opposition is strengthened and edified by teacher-initiated relational power.

Along with Miranda, over half of the participants in this study described instances of undermining unilateral power by building educator-initiated relational power with fellow school adults. Sometimes this relational power even spanned the teacher-administrator hierarchy. Lisa, the former high school teacher, provided commentary that illustrates how positive teacher-administrator relationships can underpin relational power, but also can empower teacher voice and agency on behalf of students. She explained how administrator support provided her with relational power to quickly and easily organize student transportation to a youth research conference. Here, Lisa highlights how principal allyship edifies relational power and consequently bolsters teacher opportunities to positively support youth agendas.

It was just a matter of. . .making sure my principal had a bus for me immediately. I went straight to her and I said, “Here’s what I’m looking at. Here’s the people in charge. Here’s the dates.” She looked at me and she said, “I have a bus for you already.”

The manner in which the principal willingly supported Lisa enabled the youth the opportunity to attend the conference without trouble or unilateral pushback. This suggests that, when teachers have positive relationships with administrators, teachers may accrue relational power which can be used to support student voice. In Lisa’s case, relational power was used to advocate for student trips and projects. Whether teachers build relationships with administrators or their fellow teachers, relational power can help teachers make decisions that preserve their students’ and their own interests.

Student-initiated relational power

Teachers who modeled relationship- and power-building practices may have fostered youth to engineer their own relational power with school members. However, some youth demonstrated agency to build social capital by leveraging adult resources for a particular outcome. Rebecca described how the students in the student council, which she facilitated, built relational power by seeking teacher support based on relevant expertise.

The concert that they’re [students] putting on, they know they need technology. So they decided, “Why don’t we collaborate with those teachers that are really good at technology?” So they’re not teachers that usually volunteer to step up, but the students went to them and said, “Hey, can you help us?” And now we have, out of twenty teachers, I think we have thirteen that are actively taking a piece of it.

Despite teachers’ higher position in the school hierarchy, the youth demonstrated agency and resourcefulness by initiating face-to-face conversations and asking for other teachers to contribute to their event. As a result, the youth successfully organized and led the school concert by building connections and fostering new relationships with school adults. The student group was able to successfully navigate little p politics by building relational power, which increased pathways for youth voice and agency. The majority of the educators in this study described instances of student-initiated relational power and remarked on its promising potential to enact school change. In any given school environment, there may be an array of diverse expertise and assets for youth to access and capitalize on. In this case, students can reposition themselves within unilateral power structures by leveraging the local and existing resources available to them.

However, students who build relational power to advocate for change that their teachers disagree with may cause frustration to school adults. Beatriz, a teacher at a majority white high school, described her experience when student club members fought for their independence and advocated for no supervising teacher sponsor. While the club is youth-led, the idea of no supervision created tension between Beatriz and club members on how to navigate their roles.

So what happened is this year, we had to reinvent the club. The leaders for the club [youth] they want to be the leaders, they want to be the bosses. They don’t want to have anyone supervising them. They told the assistant principal they didn’t want to be supervised, and he said, “No, you have to be supervised,” and they said, “No, we don’t want to.” After a few months, I said, “I can’t work with them. I have plenty of things to do. I can’t do this.” So this year was really tough because even when we split the club and the assembly, I told them, “It’s okay. Let’s work separately, whatever.”

In this case, the youth combined forces to resist adult supervision of their youth-led organization and the assistant principal approved for the club to split where some youth worked with Beatriz and other youth worked independently. As seen in Beatriz’s commentary, the youth resistance to her role as sponsor caused her frustration and negative feelings toward the students. While she wanted to help the students, their relational power used against her in navigating little p politics (and Big P norms) produced an adverse outcome for Beatriz. Despite this teacher-student power struggle, the youth capitalized on their relational power with the administrator and achieved their desired independence.

These findings suggest that both teacher-initiated and student-initiated relational power can be used as a tactical gambit to move beyond the hegemonic limitations of power- and knowledge-based hierarchies that can inhibit our ability to make self-maximizing decisions, thus promoting the inclusion of youth voice in educational decisions. Educators who initiate relational power with peers or administrators may develop creative strategies via interpersonal relationships to navigate Big and little p politics to better serve and advocate for students and themselves. Students who initiate relational power with school adults and peers can open increased pathways to exercise youth voice and agency in educational decision-making. Thus these findings suggest that educators and youth can use relational power to advance educational equity by fostering youth involvement in school decision-making.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study combines the interdisciplinary concepts of bounded rationality and unilateral/relational power in education to understand power dynamics in schools. Though unilateral/relational power has been applied to education in terms of community organizing and school-parent relationships (e.g., Loomer, 1976; Warren, 2005; Welton et al., 2016), we have shown its potential as a lens for youth voice. Together, these concepts reveal an important, yet unexplored nuance. While bounded rationality typically examines environmental, emotional, and computational limitations, by integrating these concepts into education conversations, we come to a new understanding about the impact of power, especially when information and decision-making ability is linked to positional power. This study highlights how the amount of power teachers hold in a space contributes and correlates to the amount of information they have to make decisions. In addition, our study suggests that knowledge- and power-based hierarchies influence school adult relationships and the relationships school adults have with youth. Due to confidentiality reasons, we were not able to report the racial identities of the educators we interviewed. However, given that the majority of the participants worked at schools serving majorities of Latinx students, the findings have implications related to race. For instance, Miranda, in partnership with a student group and a school librarian, expanded multicultural literature options for students in all her classes. In this small way, they undermined the white-dominated literary canon and Latinx students had increased access to culturally relevant literature. Interestingly, Beatriz, who teaches at a majority-white school, described youth with a level of power not seen in other interviews, which was condoned by the school administrator. On the other hand, Rocio, at a majority Latinx school, described an authoritarian school administrator who was not open to any policy changes, which most likely constrained her student group from exerting any influence on school discipline policy. Though our findings do not provide as much insight as related to social class, gender, gender identity, and more, we argue that any positionalities that are axes of societal oppression will necessarily intersect with youth-adult hierarchies, possibly exacerbating inequitable conditions and further limiting opportunities for co-created authentic student voice initiatives. This study highlights many spaces for further inquiry, as well as future implications for education policymakers and diverse practitioners in education. Below we offer implications for education researchers and practitioners on approaches to (circum)navigate school hierarchies predicated upon unilateral power structures.

Implications Related to Big P and Little p Politics

Schools have diverse constituents, including students, teachers, school aides, and administrators, which comprise little p politics. However, schools are nested in an ecological system where districts, states and national policies also govern their day-to-day operations, which are Big P politics. Each of these groups can impact change in certain situations to a specific degree; however, little p politics are local while Big P politics are broader but locally experienced. School leaders typically have the most little p power to determine how their individual school runs. Though teachers have relatively less power than principals, they determine their classroom policies and how they navigate relationships with students and, to a degree, fellow school adults. Based on this understanding, K-12 systems can become a breeding ground for adult-centered education practices and policies (Bell, 2010; Conner et al., 2016; DeJong & Love, 2015). Thus it’s important to conduct a power analysis when examining the decision-making processes of teachers, especially as related to promoting student agency, because teacher voice can serve as an indicator and pathway for student voice. With this in mind, we suggest that researchers and practitioners focused on youth voice should examine the power dynamics at hand, in addition to both Big P and little p politics, to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the diffusion of power and knowledge within their specific educational context. As a result, educators can detect and diagnose school conditions, both opportunities and obstacles, for equitable decision-making with youth. We hope such analysis will help reposition youth voice groups away from manipulation, decoration, and/or tokenization (Hart, 1992) and toward youth student-initiated, shared decisions with adults through sanctioned youth leadership within their schools and districts.

Leverage Teacher and Student Relational Power

In a way, teachers can be seen as the “middle-person” when navigating information coming from principals and administrators as well as from students and families. Teachers can leverage power over their students as authority figures, but administrators and principals can leverage power over teachers as senior school leaders. This paper presents a model of teacher behavior that aims to explain the complex choices with which teachers are confronted when they make decisions to support or censure youth voices. Teachers are often caught between two choices. They can choose to succumb to unilateral power and follow the charge of their superiors or they can leverage relational power–power “with” others (Welton et al., 2016) as a form of resistance. Specific to youth voice, teachers may lean on traditional power dynamics where students are least empowered or shift dynamics to prioritize youth voice, since youth are most impacted by Big P and little p policy decisions. While it’s critical for educators to be aware of the power dynamics within their school environment and beyond, it is also important for them to explore opportunities to maximize the benefits of relational power as a way to disrupt knowledge- and power-based hierarchies (see Fernández & Paredes Scribner, 2018; Freelon, 2018). While teachers and students have less likelihood to influence change in Big P politics, they have significant opportunity to influence change in little p politics through leveraging their interpersonal relationships.

Co-create Student Voice Initiatives

The pursuit of educational freedom begins with the resistance of tradition, and it is important to acknowledge the complex processes taking place between school leaders, teachers, and students when advancing youth voice. While students and teachers may be in favor of experimenting with progressive, youth-led education innovations, school leaders can play an important role in whether or not students are able to work with teachers to determine the contents of their curricula and youth advocacy work. Traditionally, local school policies have seldom been determined by students, so this power shift represents a radical institutional change. Schools can be transformed by allowing school policy to be directed or at least informed by youth voice. In the interim, researchers, practitioners and students can work together to leverage accrued relational power to co-create youth voice initiatives representative of expressed youth concerns specific to each school site.

With these next steps for education practitioners and researchers, we aim to support equitable school decision-making through the inclusion of youth voice. One of the resounding themes from this study is the impact of hierarchical power dynamics on youth voice and agency. Whether through YPAR or other forms of student voice initiatives, we contend, alongside numerous scholars, that such programs help challenge the unilateral power that subjugates student (and teacher) voice as optional or deficient (Domínguez, 2021; González et al., 2019; Quijada Cerecer et al., 2013; Welton et al., 2014). We hope our study pushes education researchers and practitioners to examine the climate for teacher voice and agency in schools because it can be a strong indicator and facilitator for youth voice. This is no simple feat, for any resistance requires a push against a force which beckons unified strength among those who challenge it. We recommend that educational equity proponents continue to explore possible relationships between traditional administrator-teacher dynamics and the re-creation of hegemonic teacher-student dynamics in their school sites. For those educators who strive to uplift youth voices in school decision-making, we urge you to build relational power by leveraging your local and existing resources to increase social capital for future advocacy work. By creating new channels for knowledge and power to be transmitted, equity-focused educators and youth can lean on one another and use their voices to reimagine and reconstruct their roles within school politics.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ashley D. Domínguez

Author Biographies

Ashley D. Domínguez is a doctoral candidate and theatre practitioner at Arizona State University. Her research interests encompass ethnographic and performance methodologies, critical theories, and the use of arts-based inquiry approaches with students towards equity in social, educational, and artistic contexts.

Valencia Clement, M.P.P., is a doctoral student and poet at Arizona State University. Their research explores epistemic justice, blues aesthetics and intergenerational Black liberation philosophies. They leverage womanist social change theory and Black feminist epistemology to theorize on expansive notions of scholarship, education, cultural memory, healing and radical inclusion.

Melanie Bertrand, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Arizona. Her research explores the potential of youth and community leadership to improve schools and challenge systemic racism and other forms of oppression in education. She applies cultural-historical activity theory to better understand how youth and community members engage in roles of activism, governance, and leadership within education.

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