Beyond the Rhetoric of Student Voice: new departures or new constraints in the transformation of 21st century schooling?

Abstract

This Special Issue looks at new developments within an area of practice that FORUM, with its rich history of advocacy for genuinely comprehensive public education, has always been supportive of, namely 'Student Voice'.In the past, we have tended to approach student voice from either the standpoint of young people being given greater responsibility for their own learning through a more imaginative and flexible pedagogy, or we have concentrated on ways in which institutional forms of student engagement, such as school councils, could develop a more authentic collective voice that would lead, if not to a more democratic, then at least to more engaged forms of institutional and personal learning.Those concerns and aspirations remain.What is particularly interesting here is the fact that some of the new developments presented by a range of contributors seem to provide a bridge between the individual/pedagogic and the collective/school council practices that have so often provided the two poles of past student voice work.Now, at least within many of the examples explored and celebrated within this Special Issue, there is a sense in which not only the previously forbidden area of teaching and learning is becoming a legitimate focus of enquiry from the standpoint of students as well as teachers, but also that the roles of teachers and students are beginning to become less exclusive and excluding of each other.Similarly, there is an emerging interconnectedness between and expansion of the arenas of classroom life, the wider contexts of the school as a whole, and community spaces and practices that exist outside the school.The reciprocity between student and teacher, school and community that have always been at the heart of a widely and richly conceived notion of education seems to be expressing itself in new ways and new forms that may hold out much hope for the futureWe open our Student Voice Special Issue with three articles by young people who have been involved in some of the creative and vibrant developments alluded to above.Pupils at Wheatcroft Primary School in Hertford give a hugely uplifting and inspiring account of Working as a Team; Beth Crane's advocacy of the 'Students as Researchers' initiative as means of Revolutionising School-based Research and her fellow ex-Sharnbrook Upper School student, Chris Harding's, insistence that 'Students as Researchers' is as important as the National Curriculum lay appropriately challenging and exciting foundations for the rest of the Special Issue.Louise Raymond's overview of the groundbreaking 'Students as Researchers' initiative in her Student Involvement in School Improvement: From Data Source to Significant Voice, provides a fascinating case study of how a small but radical student-led initiative can grow into something that has the potential to transform the nature of curriculum renewal and organisational learning.Leora Working as a Team: children and teachers learning from each other PUPILS AT WHEATCROFT PRIMARY SCHOOL The first article in this Special Issue of FORUM on Student Voice is by pupils at Wheatcroft Primary School in Hertford.Together with Alison Peacock (see FORUM 43 No. 1, Spring 2001) and her colleagues, they have been involved in developing new forms of learning community in which the voices of pupils and the voices of teachers listen to and learn from each other in ways which are not only vibrant, challenging and productive, but joyful.Wheatcroft Primary School is part of Project 4 of the ESRC Consulting Pupils About Teaching & Learning programme, details of which appear at the end of this special issue.