How the actions and experiences of teachers engaging in student voice can enrich our thinking about what it is and the factors that influence it

Abstract

Student voice practice is varied and the literature associated with it has largely been written by professionals outside the school contexts in which it occurs. This research explores how the ideas, actions and experiences of secondary school teachers in one school can enrich understandings of what student voice is and what influences it. Four teachers were engaged through semi-structured interviews over a twelve month period as they developed student voice practice within their own contexts. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis approach is used to uncover the participants’ experiences and consider how they understood student voice, the potential it had, and the factors that influenced it. Findings suggest that student voice is understood as part of something bigger, that it needs to benefit those engaging in it, involves collaboration and compromise, develops and evolves within context, and can take different forms. Models are constructed from the accounts to illustrate how participants understood and experienced student voice, and the psychology of self-defence theory is offered as a way of making further sense of the findings. General observations of impact are revealed, and three areas of practical challenge are identified in respect to enabling engagement, developing something bespoke, and making sense of what emerges. The findings are argued as significant as they add a teaching professional perspective to the wider literature, and offer conceptualizations that open up awareness of the challenges teachers face in engaging in student voice work. The importance of further research into how different styles of management can enable students and teachers to work more collaboratively together, alongside how teachers can be supported to make sense of what emerges from student voice engagements, are emphasized