There is a feeling of high demand and low job control in disempowering environments. The classroom should be a naturally empowering environment for teachers. Their job in the classroom is maintaining student civility and providing instruction. Administrators often disempower teachers by overloading them with work, increasing class size beyond effective ratios and limiting the decisions they are allowed to make. The teacher needs to be the center of the educational organization with the support network in place where needed.
Teachers disempower students by limiting the number of choices they have in their class.
It requires additional time and emotional energy to empower students to experience a broad range of choices in their environment. This is especially true in organizational structures with an authoritative hierarchy. A teacher in such a situation is more likely to be bureaucratically proficient than student centered. The development of national achievement tests for students is a supreme example of what not to do to empower teachers. Over the past 20 years, the literature has manifested and legitimized the existence of a wide variety of learning styles, intelligence's, socio-economic differences and learning disabilities.