In this readable and ground-breaking text, Irwin examines the forces that keep educators and students from feeling fully empowered. She defines empowerment as gaining the power to self-actualize and to facilitate this for others. Grounding her arguments in feminist and critical examinations of domination, Irwin begins by defining empowerment as fundamentally opposed to domination. She then examines the implications of this definition for our educational system.

Judith W. Irwin is Professor in the School of Education at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Teaching Reading Comprehension Processes, co-author, with I. Baker, of Promoting Active Reading Comprehension Strategies and is the editor of Reading/Writing Connections: Learning from Research and Understanding and Teaching Cohesion Comprehension.