RESISTANCE TO TAKING A CRITICAL STANCE

Although empowerment education has had much success in adult literacy programs, its future depends on preparing teachers to work within an e mpowerment framework. A common challenge in empowerment education, whe ther in adult literacy programs or teacher education programs, is stud ent resistance to the whole notion of empowerment. In this paper, we e xplore such resistance in the graduate ESL teacher preparation program at the University of Massachusetts. Using a postmodern critical and f eminist framework, we analyze student resistance to the invention and critique of ''facilitation,'' a role designed to help small groups inv ent and critique theories and methods of teaching. Both students and p rofessors alike resist taking a critical stance toward their own inven tions. Two practices, however, have been helpful in our struggles to d eal with our mutual resistance in ways that maintain the empowerment f ramework: (a) communities of resistance and (b) student writing and re search. Our goal,in documenting our struggles is to help those who wan t to work within the empowerment framework deal with resistance in the ir classrooms.