Abstract Abstract This article reports on classroom research designed to answer questions about authority—how institutions and disciplines, broadly conceived, influence teachers' ability to abnegate authority and how students' experiences influence their perceptions of authority in a business writing and a first-year composition class. The theoretical framework is derived from research about institutional and disciplinary influences on these two areas of study. This framework and our results lead us to speculate about the ways in which our students' experience of the institution and expectations of the classes and their intentions for using the material taught in the classes may have thwarted our attempt to share authority in our classrooms. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We gratefully acknowledge the help of our undergraduate and graduate associates, MO and JB. They not only attended every one of our classes but also conducted our interviews. This particular study would not have been possible without them. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJean LutzJean Lutz, also an associate professor of English, directs two technical communication programs at Miami University. She is coeditor of The Practice of Technical and Scientific Communication. She has published in collections and journals, including College English and Research in the Teaching of English.Mary FullerMary Fuller, associate professor of English and Director of the Ohio Writing Project, has coauthored Literature: Options for Reading and Writing and published essays in collections and journals, including National Middle School Journal, Writing Program Administrator, and National Writing Project Quarterly.

Abstract This article reports on classroom research designed to answer questions about authority—how institutions and disciplines, broadly conceived, influence teachers' ability to abnegate authority and how students' experiences influence their perceptions of authority in a business writing and a first-year composition class. The theoretical framework is derived from research about institutional and disciplinary influences on these two areas of study. This framework and our results lead us to speculate about the ways in which our students' experience of the institution and expectations of the classes and their intentions for using the material taught in the classes may have thwarted our attempt to share authority in our classrooms.