This study examines how my practice changed over three semesters as a beginning teacher educator. Teaching the undergraduate course, "Diversity in Elementary Education", I worked to uphold and maintain my democratic ideals while more fully accounting for the larger context of authoritarian teaching to which my students were accustomed. The…

This qualitative study examined how authority was negotiated in an undergraduate teacher education course in which I, as the teacher of the course, involved students in establishing their obligations for the semester by designing individualized grading contracts. The findings suggest that seeking mutually satisfactory agreement, finding several…