Feeling voice: The emotional politics of ‘student voice’ for teachers

Abstract

In recent years, student voice has become a popular school reform strategy, with the promise of generating relations of trust, respect, belonging and student empowerment. However, when student voice practices are taken up by schools, student voice may also be associated with less affirmative feelings: it is often accounted for in terms of teacher 'fear', 'resistance' or 'uncertainty' about altered power relations. Such explanations risk individualising and pathologising teachers' responses, rather than recognising the complexities of the institutional conditions of student voice. This article considers the affective politics of student voice: that is, the contestations that attend who gets to name how student voice feels in schools. Working with data from an evaluation study of three Australian primary schools who engage in 'exemplary' student voice practices, we listen to school leaders and facilitating teachers' accounts about the responses of other teachers at their schools to student voice. Parallels are drawn between the construction of some teachers as reluctant, and previous analyses of 'silenced' student voices in schools. We argue that, in order to analyse the enactment of student voice in more nuanced tones, it is necessary to consider the profoundly emotional experience of teaching and learning, the ambivalences of teachers' experiences of student voice and contemporary reconstitutions of teacher subjectivities.

Children’s rights and their evidence as a force for inclusion in uncertain times

“…Biesta (2007) also cautioned the limitations of evidence-based education, in that it may 'limit severely the opportunities for educational practitioners to make such judgements in a way that is sensitive to and relevant for their own contextualised settings' (p. 5). In more recent years Biesta (2013) explored the 'medicalisation of education' and argued that children are required to fit a system that does not question whether it is the child or society that needs the intervention. Individual and local contexts, indigenous knowledge, and family experiences and values, all become forms of evidence that hold as much weight as an argument based on the research evidence of what 'works' .…”

Researching how student voice plays out in relation to classroom practice in Irish post-primary schools: a heuristic device

“…Student voice can be emotionally challenging for some teachers (Black and Mayes 2020). Some will be enthusiastic and others will have concerns, and those aware of how student data can be used against them might feel the need to present an 'open' and 'keen' teacher face (Black and Mayes 2020). The significance of diverse policy actors applies here.…”

The role of students in school turnaround

“…According to Rosalyn Black and Eve Mayes (2020), the incorporation of student voice has been a strategy used in school reform for decades, but the practice comes with its own set of challenges. Researchers recognize that, while shifting to a school culture that includes students as stakeholders is necessary for the success of the school given students are the primary stakeholders (Murphy and Bleiburg, 2019), the transition requires careful consideration of the emotional costs for all involved (Black & Mayes, 2020). To understand this, it's important to first consider how adult perspectives regarding children influence the student/teacher, or even child/adult relationship, and how those perspectives can either hinder or increase the authenticity of student agency (Stoecklin, 2012).…”

“…Approaching student agency from any of the ideological standpoints requires students and adults to consider the role student participation has within an organization. In a dynamic where teachers and adults are seen as having authority over students, student agency becomes constrained by the expectations those adults have for their participation (Black and Mayes, 2020). In this dynamic, students are vulnerable, with their voices left to the interpretation of adults, while adults often feel threatened by the notion that students are challenging their teaching practices and expertise (Black & Mayes, 2020).…”

“…In a dynamic where teachers and adults are seen as having authority over students, student agency becomes constrained by the expectations those adults have for their participation (Black and Mayes, 2020). In this dynamic, students are vulnerable, with their voices left to the interpretation of adults, while adults often feel threatened by the notion that students are challenging their teaching practices and expertise (Black & Mayes, 2020). Student agency, in this lens, can be emotionally taxing for both adults and students who feel their positions are not legitimized, but instead challenged.…”