Background to the series
There is a growing recognition that children and young people are not simply citizens of the future, but are capable persons willing and able to be involved in their communities and schools. This understanding is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UK government has sought to support its obligations as a signatory in a range of ways particularly through citizenship education and activities that promote young peoples’ involvement in national, local and community decision–making forums.
Many schools have initiated new kinds of pupil governance via Pupil Councils and the allocation of formal pupil places on school committees and task groups. Some schools now routinely include pupils as part of the process of appointing new school staff. Young people are now able to be school governors. There are growing networks of schools that are actively working on ways to extend opportunities for pupils to be involved in school improvement projects: these range from one off consultations to ongoing participation in the cycle of school review and planning. OfSTED also now takes account of pupils’ views, and has been obliged to take seriously the sites in which there are high levels of pupil negotiation of work programs and school policies.
Within the youth work and community development sector, there is a range of activities that seek to involve young people. Local authorities employ staff to work with young people and to consult on issues around recreation, transport, housing and health. Arts and cultural programs support children and young people to make multimedia products and stage performances and events that allow them to express their points of view to the wider public. Community organizations engage young people in identifying local issues of concern to them, designing solutions and implementing their recommendations.
In the research community, scholars from a range of disciplines work in and with what has been called the ‘new sociology of childhood’. This body of work suggests that children and young people are capable of providing reliable data when involved in research and that it is valid to use as evidence the perceptions, feelings, opinions and ideas of children and young people. This is often described as research that gives ‘voice’ because it brings, into the specific field of knowledge, perspectives and understandings that have previously not been heard or taken seriously. There are now emerging bodies of research that focus on the ‘voice’ of children and young people in education, health, geography, sociology and social policy and cultural studies. Within universities and in conferences and journals these disciplines remain largely separate.
Areas of interest and debate
Only some of this research is connected to the emerging ‘voiced’ practice in schools and communities. It is fair to say that there are gaps between the experiences and understandings of those within universities and between those in schools and communities and those in universities. There are of course some emerging networks which involve both practitioners and researchers, but these are in their infancy. The gaps that we identify are in part endemic to universities and the professions, but here they are also symptomatic of an area of knowledge production that is emerging.
At the same time it is clear that there are substantial areas of potential debate and interest within this emergent field: for example
- the notion of ‘voice’ is contentious (is it singular or plural, do people say different things in different contexts and over time)
- there are potential disagreements about what constitutes meaningful pupil engagement in school reform and community regeneration
- there are new methodologies being developed for working with children and young people
- there are debates about what constitutes 'voice' - what is the nature of pupil participation in research? To what extent do they benefit from filling the role of informant and how is this affected by research design and methodology? What are the specific gains for pupils involved as researchers in partnership with teacher-researchers and/or external researchers? How does the latter role re-construct pupils’ roles and enable them to exercise fuller agency? What contribution can pupil participants in the seminars make to the development of theory, methodology and ethical practice in research which involves children and young people?
Theory, research and practice
Pupil ‘voice’ work needs to be more strongly connected with work in school reform. Thomson and Holdsworth (2003) examined the notion of educational participation in the Australian context and argued it most often meant either the involvement of an elite group of pupils in high profile governance, the sporadic consultation of pupils more generally through consultation or the engagement of pupils in danger of school and social exclusion in activities that re-engaged them in formal schooling. There was little equation in policy or practice of the notion of pupil participation or ‘voice’ as integral to school ‘capacity-building’ – and even less knowledge of the debates about what ‘capacities’ might actually be. The same argument about a practice-research gap and two research foci can be made in relation to community regeneration, where practice and much of the research uncritically takes up idea of capacity building, development and social capital – around which there are both helpful dialogues and some important evidence. Fielding (2001b) has summarised usefully some of these questions in relation to pupil voice: who speaks, how are they chosen, who listens to whom, when and about what, and what happens as a result? We plan to use these questions as one lens through which to analyse both research and practice.
The seminar series thus connects key scholarly debates with the emerging pupil voice research. It has brought together in conversation researchers and practitioners who are not currently in contact. The category ‘voice’ is a helpful focus, not only because it is the term that has been taken up in policy. There is a substantive history of recent debate within the research community about questions such as standpoint, authenticity, a fixed and unitary subject position and multiplicity. To date there has been little connection between such debates and work around pupil voice: it has tended, with a few exceptions to make the case for voice rather than to interrogate its theoretical assumptions. In addition, there is disaggregated evidence - about the level of meaningful involvement of young people and the locus of decision-making - in a range of disciplines that could usefully be brought together. There are also debates and some important evidence from more general research on education that speak to ‘pupil voice’. Most pertinent are feminist and other critical scholarship on the selection, exclusion, regulation, containment and appropriation of ‘voice’. Other scholarly research around voice and agency and agency and structures is largely disconnected from the research on and practice in pupil voice. The seminars also ask whether the notion of rights, as used by policy, is a helpful framework for research into voice, a question that has been taken up largely by those outside of education.
The seminar series has brought together the range of disparate researchers and practitioners together with children and young people involved in the area identified as ‘pupil voice’ with the aim of discussing:
- research into the experiences of young people in communities.
This ranges from consultations, evaluations, ethnographies and surveys through to action research.
- research into the involvement of young people in education reform.
This covers a range of foci – from being consulted about school uniform, and school rules, through to major curriculum and policy changes. It also varies from pupils acting as research subjects, pupils as co-researchers, pupils as co–theorisers, and pupils as key researchers and activists. Further variation is introduced through the range of methods employed.
- advances in the methodological toolkit of researchers working in the area.
The usual range of statistical and qualitative methods are employed in working with children and young people. There are however substantive modifications that are made to allow young children and those with poor literacy to participate. There are also researchers pushing at the edges of research methods, working with visual techniques, concept mapping, spatial investigations, website readings, and drama
- focus on the range of ethical issues that are integral to researching with children and young people
Questions of validity and reliability are involved in all research but are even more at issue when there are significant power-generation-knowledge gaps.
Objectives and structure of the series
The seminars have been examining the body of evidence from research and practice in order to meet the following objectives: To
- map the activities that are identified as ‘pupil voice’
- delineate key advances and debates in theory, methodology and ethics
- locate gaps in the field for further development and inquiry
- develop an online clearinghouse with listings of projects, bibliographies and networks, and
- identify key forums through which the field can continue the dialogue
There have been three seminars of two days, plus an initial planning meeting. The final seminar will take the form of a conference May 22nd/23rd in Nottingham ‘Pupil Voice and Participation: pleasures, promises and pitfalls’ A core team of researchers, postgraduate students, and practitioners from four sites (University of Nottingham, Manchester Metropolitan University, and University of Sussex, and the Networked Learning Communities, Cranfield) anchor the series with contributions from invited speakers and participants.
Publication / dissemination
Invited presenters have included major users such as Children’s Commissions, Children Rights organizations and Trusts such as Carnegie and Phoenix , hopefully these links will be retained.
- The Networked Learning Communities programme of NCSL holds regular conferences, publishes newsletters and publications and also has a website to which this one is linked.
- This website will be expanded to include contributions and papers from the May conference, also with links to other organisations.
- Two special issues of peer-refereed journals are being prepared and at least one book proposal is in preparation. Contributions may include conference papers given in relation to the series
References
Thomson, P and Holdsworth, R (2003) Theorising change in the educational ‘field’: re-readings of ‘student participation’ projects. International Journal of Leadership in Education 6 (4) 371–391
