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Helen Lawson, Zhiyan Guo Heather Piper, Professor Bridget Somekh & Jo Frankham
Manchester Metropolitan University & University of ManchesterManchester, England, UK
Children's rights, and the right of the child to be heard, and children's voice, and now pupil voice, have been topics of discussion and activity at international, national, and local levels for some decades. There are similarities and differences in the aspirations of these various rights and responsibilities, yet at heart all are concerned to some extent with young people ' s participation and/or representation in situations that affect their lives. Manifestations of ' pupil voice ' will differ according to interpretation, but we suggest this generally includes notions of democracy-in-action, participation in democratic principles and practice, and/or improving provision in schools. Focusing solely on the school context is not feasible, as all children and young people have lives outside their schools, as do their teachers. There are many potential mechanisms in schools where ' pupil voice ' has a place, including school councils/forums, peer education, etc. We provide a snapshot of just some of these in order to provoke wider debate. Our aim here is to present a brief discussion paper, rather than a fully developed, fully referenced line of argument. Included examples are mainly from our research conducted as identified. We are not suggesting these examples are necessarily the ' right ' way for schools to be encouraging pupil voice, but we suggest they are worthy of further consideration in the spirit of debate, and by the sharing ideas, helping to forge a better practice.
In order to satisfy an appeal for the 'pupils ' voice' to be heard, many schools have tended towards the formation of councils or forums (Monica Taylor, 2002). In these contexts pupils are consulted over a variety of issues (school uniform, etc). In some cases, schools habitually invite a couple of representatives to governor's meetings and to other decision making events. However, as with youth forums and councils in other settings, the voice of the young person does not happen in a vacuum; other factors come in to play. Whose voice is being heard? A middle class voice? A male voice? A white voice? And so on. School councils, like other young people's councils elsewhere, tend to be made up of young people who will be elected because they have other privileges (Piper, 1997). They are likely to be popular and very likely to be middle class, and familiar with professional adult discourse. In addition to who is allowed or enabled to have a voice (which raises questions about who has the right to ' allow ' in this context), there is the related issue of whether anyone is actually listening. Having a voice is useless, and indeed patronising, if it isn't heard - and when necessary, acted upon - in an ethical kind of way. Also, does the voice have equal status to that of an adult? Obviously not in the majority of cases, because there is almost always the assumption in the school situation, stated or otherwise, that adults will have the final say. This will be explained by their considerable knowledge, accumulative experience, and ' professional ' judgement, and sometimes their accountability under the law.
Jo Frankham ' s research in this area (Frankham, 1998) echoes what others have claimed in relation to who volunteers for such schemes (councils, forums, etc.) in the first place. They tend to be the ' academic high-flyers ' who talk about the benefits of volunteering for their university application forms. Helen Lawson ' s research (2001) found the opposite. For those pupils who were expecting good academic grades, the need to become involved in community work was not as great as for those pupils who were less likely to succeed academically. One pupil put it very clearly. He undertook community work because ' Let ' s face it, my grades aren ' t going to be that good ' .
In a small scale survey conducted by Helen Lawson in May 2000 84% of schools in Lincolnshire stated that they had a school council. In the majority of cases, each class elects one or two representatives who take issues for discussion to the council. There is usually a teacher present (generally the PSHE Co-ordinator) who is responsible for organising when a school council meeting takes place, though not what is discussed at the meetings. That it is a teacher who decides when a meeting occurs raises a number of issues. One pupil commented: ' I just think we need more notice about the meetings because some days we don ' t get told till five minutes before the meetings ' . This means that council representatives have little time to prepare for meetings and to find out what issues other pupils would like to raise. Although allowing pupils as little pre-meeting preparation time as possible may not be deliberate, it is bound to have an impact on what issues get discussed and how they are debated. This is in contrast to one school that took part in this research, where meetings are timetabled at the beginning of the year and discussions about council business form part of PSHE lessons.
In addition, the presence of a key teacher and occasionally the head teacher will have an effect on pupil discourse and may inhibit discussions. Although people adjust their behaviour depending on the context in which they are operating, it is important that the presence of a teacher does not stifle real debate, which would leave pupils feeling frustrated. During one school council meeting discussing the use of common rooms in break time, a pupil council representative presented the headteacher with a petition, asking for common rooms to remain open for pupil use. The headteacher greeted the petition enthusiastically saying that ' It ' s wonderful to see pupils taking up issues independently and organising yourselves like this. I will always encourage you to take action in this way ' . However, the initial approbation of pupil action was, to some extent, undermined when, after flicking through the sheets of signatures the headteacher remarked with a wry smile, ' Hmmm, 900 signatures in a school of 600 ... Interesting ' . While, of course, it is very possible that some pupils had put their names down more than once, and even made up a few names, it is also possible that pupils had discussed the issue with the wider community, including friends not at the school and parents, and had received outside support for their cause. It is highly unlikely that the head deliberately wanted to undermine and patronise the pupils but a casual aside like the above can leave pupils feeling very under valued.
One intriguing idea that emerged at a recent Study Day of the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN - notes shortly to be available on CARN website) was the possibility of adapting the practice of ' citizens ' juries ' to replace the school council. Elham Kashefi described her work with socially disadvantaged communities in multi-ethnic urban areas in the North-West of England, which included setting up juries made up of people drawn from the community (not necessarily official representatives), who were then supported in calling expert witnesses, such as council officials and local politicians, and cross-questioning them after they had presented their evidence. After discussion, Brendan Cronin, a primary teacher in the North-West of England and experienced action researcher, decided he would explore the possibility of introducing citizens ' juries comprised of children in his school, in order to give the children genuine access to negotiating their needs with powerful figures, such as the headteacher, governors and parents, and the authority (through his facilitation, as was the case in Elham ' s example) to have their voices heard. Similarly, Pimbert et al. (2003) provide an example of an action research project in which citizens ' juries were used to give community members in an Indian district power in negotiating the implementation of a government policy, ' Vision 2020 ' , which was aimed at overcoming poverty. Certainly, the introduction of such a radical social practice in a primary school would need to be supported by a structured process, such as action research, in which a powerful adult could facilitate the children ' s work to ensure that it did not degenerate into a charade, in much the same way as many ' school councils ' have tended to.
The powerful adult (trained for the purpose) would need to ensure the participation of all children in the school at some level, and not just those who quickly understand the process. While doing an ethnographic case study in Mandarin-speaking families in Stockport, Zhiyan Guo had access to an eight-year-old girl talking about her and her classmate ' s role in the school council in helping save her school from closing down. She seemed very positive and proud of their work in making presentations to people from the local educational department. The school was finally saved, which made the pupils think that their voices had been heard, and their ideas had been brought to play. Adding her interpretation as an adult, Zhiyan Guo presumed that what was actually heard was also probably the ventriloquising voice of the headteacher. However, no matter what roles these pupil representatives played in the final decision, the pupils themselves were practising and understanding what it means to be a citizen. It would appear from our separate and collective experiences that the practice of ' school council ' or ' citizen juries ' is welcoming to many of the pupils, or at least many we have come into contact with. For some pupils in primary schools, they may take an active part because they think it is fun. From the socio-cultural perspectives, the pupils are mediated to the democratic and social world they will enter at some point in their life. These examples could perhaps be regarded as illustrations of guided participation, within a framework where children are involved in a collaborative process, organising their participation in activities, whilst the process allows for dynamic shifts in developing children ' s responsibilities (Rogoff, 1990). If successful, the pupils would maybe become active in the local (or global) community at some time in their life.
Our perhaps sometimes rather cynical view could lead to the suggestion that the voice of pupils is unlikely to ever carry much weight. However, there are forums and councils, in schools and elsewhere who manage this better than others. If democracy has, at its core, issues of equality and participation, then all pupils (as citizens, as well as pupils) have the right to be represented in discussion about what happens in the community of which they are part - i.e., the school, and that this right is also an educational one, i.e., providing pupils with opportunities to learn about democratic principles and practices. However, in the same way that Giddens has suggested that we may need to develop new forms of democracy in order to maximise the number of people who actively participate so, too, do we need to look at new democratic processes in schools. A perceived lack of interest by some pupils may be caused by a reluctance or inability to become involved on current terms because involvement necessitates an ' adversarial frame of mind ' and a competitive nature that does not come easily to some people. The suggestion here, though, is not to abandon the notion of pupil voice, but to encourage the cross-fertilisation of ideas and practice between those who manage to get it more right than others, whilst accepting we are unlikely to ever totally succeed.
Many of the more laudable intentions around ' pupil voice ' have parallels with the intentions of ' peer education ' , which has become increasingly popular in the areas of personal and social education (mainly in the area of citizenship education). Here, teenagers (generally) are trained to educate their contemporaries on subjects such as HIV/AIDS, drug use, and so on. The rationale for these initiatives rests on some interconnected ideas: that teenagers already exchange information on these ' sensitive ' subjects, and can speak openly about them. Teenagers are therefore deemed more likely to enact participatory forms of education without embarrassment. Young people are also inscribed as being highly susceptible to peer pressure and it is claimed that peer education puts this ' pressure ' to good use.
The very notion of peer pressure, in itself, is highly problematic and is based on a deficit version of teenagers - those who have what it takes, and those who don ' t. An appeal to young people ' s (rather than adults ' ) lack of embarrassment has been used by some teachers to explain how they let children deal with weighty issues, such as death: ' Other children are a huge support, they ' ll take the child ' s mind off it, but also some of them will be interested in the experiences, so they will share, and often they ' ll share in their own language, but you get the body language, so we deal with it in that way ' (Schostak, Pearce and Piper, 2004). This apparent abdication of a teacher ' s responsibilities and a willingness to pass this on to pupils, obviously considered better able to cope, is unusual in most teaching experiences we speculate, at least in the majority of classroom situations we are collectively familiar with. Yet what most examples have in common is teacher embarrassment (sometimes conflated with a fear of litigation - see Foucault). A similar trend has been noted in the area of touch, where children are now encouraged to massage each others backs to relieve stress, whilst adults find ever more complex ways of avoiding touching children (Piper and Smith, 2003). If pupil voice is to be meaningful, then adults will need to hear when children and young people claim similar embarrassment, and/or claim they feel ' used ' .
A teenager interviewed for a study conducted by Barbara Walker (1994) thought ' they ' re a bunch of wimps, why should I follow them? ' The article raises other issues that are relevant to our concern in this paper with pupil voice. One of the very clear outcomes of evaluations on peer education suggests that what teenagers do is mimic the adults who have trained them for the scheme (unsurprisingly, given most of us only know how to replicate our own experiences). They do not, then, set the agenda, or enact forms of participatory, empowering education, but (like many novice teachers) try to bolster their own lack of confidence by copying others. Jo Frankham has seen this being played out in school forums, too - where basically young people are performing roles that adults have previously enacted for them - including calling their peers to order, and so on. In one school, huge amounts of energy were expended on issues like proper minute-taking and financial reports, and some of the staff thought that this was what the forum was for - as in ' giving them practice at things they ' ll find useful later in life ' .
Unsurprisingly, teenagers reported that there were many issues they would not talk about with their peers - which we suggest may well be the case between representatives and non-representatives on many school forums. This assumption that individuals will feel more comfortable speaking with others ' like themselves ' is a topic of research in other areas such as gender studies, and ethnicity studies. Aside from the difficulty that we need to decide for ourselves who is ' like us ' (and this may or may not have something to do with age), in any case, we may feel more comfortable and less embarrassed speaking to someone we consider completely different from ourselves, and that may well be a teacher and not another pupil.
In a related context, perhaps one concerned more with ' improving teaching and learning ' , another example of children ' s voices being listened to by adults is when they are supported in taking on the role of researchers or co-researchers. Current research being carried out by Bridget Somekh and Matthew Pearson, in the Pedagogies with E-Learning Resources Project (PELRS, 2003-06), sponsored by the General Teaching Council for England, is involving children and young people as members of the research team. In this case, empowerment of the children is only the secondary - albeit important - aim. The primary aim is to access their specialist knowledge which would otherwise be inaccessible to the university-based researchers and teacher-researchers in the team (Pearson and Somekh, 2004). The research design involved children with specialist technical expertise in using ICT (self-taught at home) so that they could advise on ways of making ICT-use support curriculum learning more lively and powerfully than much current practice in schools.
Altogether, sixteen children, four from each school involved in the first two years of action research, have contributed enthusiastically, clearly fascinated by the opportunity to comment on matters of pedagogy in relation to ICT. In practice, their expertise in pedagogy and school practices has been as useful, if not more useful, than their ICT expertise. They have made a particularly insightful contribution to analysis of digital video data, often commenting spontaneously on things that the university researcher had not initially seen as significant, and making contributions at two levels - first, in what they said, and second, in the co-construction with the researcher of a deeper level of analysis through a process of ' distributed cognition ' (Salomon, 1993). In other words, their comments have sparked in Matthew Pearson a deeper level of reflection, through which he is able to add more theorised analysis to their practical insights, drawing on socio-cultural theory. These young people will be involved in presenting their account of their work in the forthcoming ESRC-sponsored seminar series on Pupil Voice, led by Nottingham, Manchester Metropolitan and Sussex universities (and arguably should be named in academic papers in much the same ways as other research assistants when their data is being used).
There are obviously problems in making the aim of involving young people as full co-researchers with adults into a reality, but it is part of the PELRS action research to ensure that this happens as genuinely as possible, in ways that the young people themselves find affirming, as well as challenging.
In this brief paper we have raised issues across a range of initiatives associated with pupil voice. We continue to critique ourselves and others and encourage others to do likewise. If pupil voice is to be worth having, it will be a critical voice that asks some of the questions we pose in this paper, but will also ask others we have not yet thought of. We, as adults, need to be educated how to listen, just as much as some young people may need to be educated in how to use their ' voice ' effectively. This is a long-term collaborative process that, despite the rhetoric, many of us have only recently begun.
Frankham, J. (1998). 'Peer Education: The unauthorised version' in British Educational Research Journal 24(2): 179-194.
Lawson, H. (2001). ' Active Citizenship in Schools and the Community ' , in The Curriculum Journal, 12 (2): 169-184.
Pearson, M. and B. Somekh (2004). Activity and Agency: Engaging young people in ICT Research. Paper presented at The Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media Conference, 26-29 July, University of London Institute of Education.
Pimbert, M. and Wakeford, T. (2003). Prajateerpu, power and knowledge: the politics of participatory action research in development: Part 1. Context, process and safeguards Action Research 1(2): 184-207.
Piper, H. (1997). Evaluation Report - Youth Power 2000, Cheshire County Council.
Piper, H. and Smith, H. (2003).' Touch in Educational and Child Care Settings: Dilemmas and Responses', in British Educational Research Journal, 29 (6): 879-894.
Pollard, A. (1987) 'Studying Children ' s Perspectives - A Collaborative Approach ' , in The Social World of the Primary School, Pollard, A. (ed.) London: Cassell.
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Salomon, G., Ed. (1993). (Ed.). Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations, Cambridge, New York and Melbourne, Cambridge University Press.
Schostak, J. Pearce, C. and Piper, H. (2004). CAPE UK ' s ' Of this Planet ' - Positive Images Programme, CAPE and the Manchester Metropolitan University.
Taylor, M. J. and Johnson, R. (2002). School Councils: Their Role in Citizenship and Personal and Social Education. Slough: NFER.
Walker, B. (1994). No-One to Talk With. Norwich, University of East Anglia.
The authors are all based in Manchester, England in the United Kingdom. All but Jo Frankham are located at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Jo is based at the University of Manchester. MMU is one of three universities leading an ESRC-funded seminar series, directed by Pat Thomson, at the University of Nottingham. This seminar series is entitled ' Engaging Critically with Pupil Voice: Children as Partners in School and Community Change. Details of forthcoming seminars can be found on www.pupilvoice.org.uk.
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