The university professor’s authority: a study focused on language arts students’ accounts

Abstract

This article presents some conclusions of an investigation of professors’ authority, from the perspective of students about to complete their studies at an Argentinean public university. This work is written along the line of investigation about university experience, directed by Dr. Sandra Carli in the Education and Society Area of Instituto Gino Germani – Facultad de Ciencias Sociales – Universidad de Buenos Aires. The text focuses on language arts students from the Facultad de Humanidades y Artes de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Faculty of Humanities and Arts of the National University of Rosario). The prioritised data collection technique was semi-structured interviews with contributions of life stories. As a general conclusion, student accounts show a delegitimization of traditional student–teacher relationships based on hierarchical authority and the recognition of multiple characteristics of authority in some professors, such as knowledge of the discipline, academic recognition within the field and professorial charisma. Additionally, the authority of the past, the author and the book as an object are emphasised. Finally, the legitimacy granted to the Bachelor of Arts figure is revealed, along with the consequent discredit that falls upon high school teaching, which is the most frequent career prospect among language arts graduates.