One step forward, two steps back?
By Roger Holdsworth
I want to raise some concerns about the nature of many current school practices in the area of student voice, agency and participation. Or, more specifically, it’s a concern I have with what is often being shared as appropriate practice … because I’m also hopeful that what’s shared may not reflect the broader nature of what is actually happening.
What we see reported over the last couple of years in particular, and often by students themselves, are school-based ‘student voice’ practices that have become more limited in their scope and authenticity. We are seeing a return to limited ideas about what students can and should be involved with, which I thought we had moved beyond. This indicates to me (and others) not that student desires for their participation have vanished, but that the spaces for authentic and meaningful student voice, agency and participation have become more limited in schools. We may have slipped backwards and returned to the dominant ethos (which asserted the limited capacity of students) that we struggled against over the last 20 or more years. Of even more concern is that there seems to be an acceptance of such limited practices as defining the space – as defining what is possible.
In reflecting back on our journey over the last 20 years, I used to report in lectures and articles about a positive change that had occurred. When students were asked in the early 2000s to describe what their participation was, I reported, they shared stories that were overwhelmingly focused around fundraising, organised through and by the Student Representative (or Leadership) Council (SRC/SLC). Perhaps organising socials or sports days, or complaining about the ‘state of the toilets’ got an occasional look in too. When I asked: ‘what else did you do?’, students looked blank (or annoyed) and noted that there was no time for anything else: they were ‘asked’ or ‘expected’ to fundraise for charity (or for the school), with the assumption that this was normal for what students do – and that left no time or energy …or vision – to engage in anything else.
I then noted in these talks and articles that, over the next decade or so, these student-presented accounts of fundraising or socials became less and less frequent (even in un-prompted accounts), and there was a greater focus in the student reports of their student voice, agency and participation activities being around the core purposes of schools ie learning and teaching. I argued that it took specific initiatives to challenge the dominant ethos and to support those changes, including locally in Victoria through the leadership of the VicSRC. Initiatives such as the VicSRC’s ‘Teach the Teacher’ Program in particular, provided the spaces within schools that enabled students to shift the focus to the core purposes of schools (though initiatives here too could be deflected and co-opted). Slowly, the assumption that students could not and should not be involved in discussion and decisions around learning and teaching was broken – and this then permitted students to talk and write about ways to do this.
But really, this wasn’t entirely new. Early research work in this field, particularly the large ESRC project at Cambridge University in the UK in the late 1990s and early 2000s (though it could be seen to have a narrow and adult-centric view of ‘student voice’ as ‘consulting students’), was explicitly around ‘consulting students about teaching and learning’. (Though it should also be noted that the much more agentic ‘students as researchers’ approaches within curriculum and pedagogy areas were nurtured within this research.)
But it seems that the last few years have been marked by a retreat from that focus on learning and teaching as appropriate and possible for student voice, agency and participation. Instead, there has been a re-emergence of the limited ideas of what students can – or even should – be concerned with under these titles: raising money for charities or for the school; improving toilets; or even worse, having selected students uncritically enforcing adult requirements about proper behaviour.
We should note that these struggles to change perceptions were difficult and extended over many years. For example, one initial response to the dominance of ideas about student fundraising was to advocate ‘just say no’; another was to develop a much more nuanced approach that started with student discussion and decisions about the nature of the world they wanted (ie decisions that were value-driven) and to have this drive a more student-centred and critical decision-making process about ‘the change we want to make’ with their talents, actions and funds.
Parallel with this was the development of formal curriculum-based program examples of student voice, agency and participation such as Student Action Teams and Students as Researchers. These were picked up enthusiastically by teachers and students, and are reported to still exist in some (perhaps many) schools, though they are now seldom documented or heralded. Perhaps administrative and time pressures within schools means that there is limited time for documentation of these; and this then means that it is easier to write a short story or make a video about a relatively trivial example than to document a much more complex initiative eg the process of curriculum negotiation.
Further, while such initiatives may continue to be listed as occurring within schools, there is always the danger of the underlying ideas and language being co-opted into limited views of students’ capabilities and opportunities. For example, at one school, a Library Student Action Team was proposed, and on examination, it became apparent that this was simply to be a group of students ‘given the responsibility’ for covering new books. At that time, we were impelled to point to the difference between Student Responsibility Groups and Student Action Teams – with the latter necessarily having a critical investigative/research function that then determined the student-led action. In this example, we were able to enter into a conversation with students and teachers about the possibility for students to critically examine the books in the school library, or those being purchased, for their representation of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and so on, and recommend to the school on future purchases. When we challenged the limited idea, there was an ‘ah-ha’ moment at the school: ‘we finally get it!’
With the old conceptions of student voice, agency and participation re-emerging in recent years, these again need to be challenged. Unchallenged, they contain dangerous assumptions about what students can or should be concerned with. The lack of space and opportunities provided for students to have voice and agency around their learning and teaching has a consequence: students’ desire for ‘a say’ in their education is diverted into areas that are peripheral to the core functions of school. For a ‘new generation’ of students, unless they themselves are aware of possibilities that go beyond those assumptions, they will also be the unwitting arbiters of limited practices. Particularly for students who might advocate for change, the disruption of ‘peer-continuity’ from observing the initiatives of older students about possible practices has also been important. There continues to be the need for conversations and stories that lead to ‘ah-ha!’ and ‘I get it now!’
Why has this happened now? In discussions about this, the impact of COVID and particularly of the period of remote learning has been cited as a particular interruption in the development of practices. Surviving in these times preoccupied students and teachers; students’ voices and actions were often placed ‘on hold’, and collaborative or partnership initiatives around learning and teaching were seen as of lesser importance than continuing any form of schooling. Paradoxically, the impact of remote learning also had another impact on individual student agency: students could (and were required to) make more decisions about their own learning, including turning off their computers. Recent reports of increased ‘bad behaviour’ of some students ie indicators of student disenchantment with schools and schooling, and with the perceived purpose (or purposelessness) of their learning, may arise from similar individual rebellions – which is, indeed, a form of individual agency. Similarly, there are reports of large numbers of students not returning to school at all after the online times ended. What was lacking, and may not have returned, is the collective agency of students with regard to curriculum and pedagogy. We have returned to the ‘safe’ areas of agency around fundraising, socials, complaints and compliance.
And, as has been pointed out, teachers themselves are expressing concern about the lack of their own agency with regard to learning and teaching, as both requirements and administrative burdens serve to make them more compliant with a centralised curriculum, leaving little space for their own voice, agency and participation … let alone that of their students, or for building partnerships.
The lack of clear guidance and support, including diverse and positive case studies and reflective teacher training/in-service, further reinforces the limited conception. Neither teachers nor students see stories and examples that provide any other model. There is little opportunity for teachers (or students) to share and critique what they are doing or proposing through Communities of Practice. In that situation, it is then easy for students, as well as teachers and schools, to fall into the trap of thinking that this is the norm – that this is all that is possible. Indeed, even the publication of stories about limited practice can reinforce those limited views – unless there is some discussion of what has been, and what could be. We need to challenge this and provide some vision of the possible.
In that context, the stories in this issue of ReConnectEd (and the next) provide a beacon of hope that not all practices are reverting to ‘old type’. The focus on curriculum and pedagogy, and the documentation of some practices here, build on decades of work. There’s still a long way to go before such possibilities move from the ‘margins’ to the ‘mainstream’.
We need to encourage the documentation and sharing and rewarding of the larger, slower and more authentic stories of partnerships in curriculum and pedagogy. Perhaps we need to revisit and re-write some of the resources that had previously been important in shifting the debate into more meaningful and authentic areas. From an enforced step back, we need to work out how to take two steps forward again.