Although the politics of the classroom touches many aspects of learning and teaching, my impression is that only in the last few years has it been recognised in ELT as a field worth investigating in its own right, though I'm certain that we are only at the beginning of what will become an exciting and revealing exploration during the next few years.

lassroom politics concerns the decisions that affect how classroom participants spend their time. It is about where power lies and how it is distributed. It is therefore also about the discrepancy between the explicit, visible power structure and the implicit, invisible power structure of the classroom. By extension it has to do with learners who have apparently lost the desire to participate in the decisions that affect them, and with teachers who feel unable or unwilling to share such decisions with their learners.

It is precisely because these decisions affect how participants spend their time that they are so important. The business of decision-making is inseparable from issues of involvement, ownership, engagement, personal investment and the subjective perceptions of significance and worthwhileness (in fact the things that are often lumped together under the convenient though not always helpful label of 'motivation'). School education is in general based on a hierarchical view of power which has not been deeply questioned by the providers of mainstream education, teacher preparation and learning materials. This means that although stated aims of education may be to help learners direct their own learning, the methodology through which this is taught often contradicts its own message, and has the opposite effect.

It is quite fashionable now to point this out, and there is much talk of learner training, but have we really made a shift in attitude? Here are some activities that have helped me get to grips with this question, and that, by the way, offer an ideal arena for classroom research. The first question I like to ask myself is "What decisions do I take while preparing a lesson, and what decisions do I take while teaching a lesson?" One approach is just to list the things that I make decisions on, while watching carefully for decisions that I do not appear to "make" as such, but which slip through as "made" nevertheless.

If you try this question, the first problem you will encounter is sensitising yourself to the decisions that you don't realise you are making. But when you've managed that then the decisions you notice might include: what activities to do, how to do them, for how long, what to leave out, who is to correct, and when, who writes on the board, and what, who stands, speaks, sits, what questions are asked, who answers, who has the last word, what aspects of the personal learning process are addressed, what feedback is invited, and given, and who to, etc.

When I have enough items to work on I ask myself a second question: "Which of these decisions can I take in cooperation with the learners, and which can only be taken by me?" I find it easy to answer these questions with quick certainty, and then as I reflect the certainty gives way to a range of healthy doubts, some usefully uncomfortable. Then I find that a third question helps me: "Of the decisions that I could perhaps share with the learners, which do I feel more reluctant to share, and which do I feel less reluctant to share?"Then of course comes a fourth question: "If I am going to share with the learners a few decisions that I normally take myself, then how am I to do it?" There are two areas I would like to comment on in this respect, and they are attitude and negotiation.

Sharing power is not a technique, it is an attitude, an orientation towards oneself and towards others. The technique of power sharing does not work when the attitude behind the technique is one of resistance to sharing power. Am I really willing to share power, to do things other than my way, to be in a dialogue with my learners over what best to do and how best to do it? Of course I wish my students were more self-directing, but is my attitude part of the reason for their passivity? Are my attempts to foster their self-direction in fact disguised attempts to have them choose, by themselves, to do what I wanted them to do in the first place? Is my idea of student self-direction in fact teacher-direction by another name?

These questions are not loaded or trick questions, but I have found that I need to be in asking these questions in order to keep myself alert and on my toes. And although the answers to these questions enable me gradually to access the attitudes that drive my behaviours, it is actually having the question itself, holding it, living the question without ready answers, that is more important.

Negotiation means to me the process of coming to a decision that takes account of the views, preferences and needs of the different participants, and that leaves them feeling intact, respected and involved whether or not their specific suggestion was adopted. It has proved a difficult area for many teachers to get to grips with, myself included, and I would like to share some insights that have helped me. Negotiation is an attitude, not just a technique.

1. Negotiation is an attitude, not just a technique.
2. There are many gradations of balance between my preference and yours. It is not simply a matter of doing what I want OR of doing what you want.
3. Nor is it simply a matter of I decide OR you decide. Decisions can be made hierarchically (I, the teacher, decide on your, the students' behalf after listening carefully to all the suggestions), or cooperatively, (we together decide on your behalf after establishing the alternatives) or autonomously (you decide on your behalf after listening to the suggestions, including mine). And within each of these three there are further gradations.
4. Since negotiation arises essentially from an attitude, it has a strong non-verbal component, especially with younger learners.
5. It is essential to identify the degree of negotiability of a decision before offering it for negotiation. Non-negotiable items include decisions made by the system outside your classroom (syllabuses, exams, parental choice, school facilities, class size and mix, timetable etc), as well as what you the teacher have decided and are not prepared to negotiate.
6. What is interesting about a non-negotiable item is to find within it the area that is negotiable. For example we, the whole class, have to follow this syllabus, but how we do so is up to us; or, the choice of course book is determined, but how we, the class, breathe life into it is up to us; or, we have to have mid-term internal class exams, but we, the students, can have a hand in designing, writing and marking them.The teacher can help the learner to deal with the fallout from decisions in which she has no choice, and to exploit the choices that are still open to her.
7. It is simply another act of tyrany to impose self-direction on someone who at the moment is not ready, or not prepared, or not experienced enough to make sense of the challenge. It is an infringement of the respect that is essential in a student-centered approach. If students have become unused to making decisions they may well be reluctant to participate at first; and, if I am to work from where the students are, then my starting point must be their wish that I would make the decision for them. Let me be ready to start there, while building-in whatever degree of self-direction is acceptable to them.
8. The invitation to participate in decision making is in itself educational, no matter whether or not the offer is ta

Finally, I'd like to pick up on a point I made at the beginning. Though we are just beginning to realise that there is a field here that is worth opening for investigation, our mainstream methodologies have not yet got to grips with the issues. Power, classroom politics, negotiation and attitude are not yet a significant part of our training or our literature. We have had a professional blind spot in this area, which, though it may have been convenient, is no longer acceptable. My classroom politics is part of my overall classroom atmosphere which my students are immersed in for the whole of every lesson!