Asked about ‘voice’ in schools, you may well think about Student Councils, student governors, or similar groups with different names (student ambassadors, champions, researchers, committees, Parliaments…). These are often organised as forms of representative democracy – students are elected, or selected, or volunteer; they are meant to stand in for a bigger whole, to speak for others; they work on issues of concern to the school (from policies, to the environment, facilities, communication, to how it is run, to teaching and learning); and they are often ‘official’ or visible to (at least some) adults and students in the school.
Or, you might think about forms of ‘consultation’, such as surveys or focus groups with classes, year groups or the whole school, where young people’s views on aspects of educational provision are sought, often with a promise to act on feedback to improve services (“you said …we did”).
All these are established and valuable ways of thinking about youth participation and active citizenship. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child gives children a right to express their views and to have them taken seriously, and it underpins other participation rights in the Convention. Research identifies benefits of this work but also points to inequalities of access to participation, structured by socio-economic, gender, racial and other differences.
The authors of Youthquake 2017, James Sloam and Matt Henn, argue that young people are “reinventing political activism”, participating through petitions, boycotts, demonstrations, online, rather than traditional electoral politics.They can be seen as ‘stand-by citizens’ who engage on a case by case basis where an issue resonates with them. Such activism may slip under the radar of politics as traditionally defined, but it is no less worthy of attention and respect.
Sevasti-Melissa Nolas at Goldsmiths College London describes these often informal groupings and forms of activism as ‘publics’, and is particularly interested in how they help us think about children and young people’s everyday lives and social action in new ways.
You can hear her in conversation with Professor Rachel Thomson discussing her research here and read an article she wrote about this for the National Children’s Bureau journal Children & Society here. Her blog is here.
Much of what you find in the pages of AGENDA, however, involves rather different ways of being or acting in the world: groups of young people who come together, often supported by adults, sometimes locally and sometimes across geographical areas, around particular issues of concern. These issues may be school-related but they often also go beyond that. Their voices are expressed in a range of ways – not just through talk at meetings, but creatively, through dance, visual art, zines, artefacts, banners, marches. They engage in concerted activism directed at politicians, headteachers and others in power, but also in more personal campaigns directed at peers. They may use social media such as blogs, vlogs, hashtags, memes, where they leave traces over time. They may ‘go viral’, become social movements known to a wider audience, and endure; or, they may be ephemeral as those involved move on to other matters and concerns. An individual young person may be involved in more than one such grouping at any one time, and across time.
The origins of AGENDA lie in just such action by small groups of young people writing Valentine cards to politicians, tweeting about the need for youth-led action to make positive relationships matter, with the support of academics, voluntary sector organisations, and others.
One aim of AGENDA is to help educators to ‘see’ these groupings and forms of action, which sometimes fall outside conventional understandings of youth participation, to appreciate how they might work differently, and to learn from their creativity and energy.
Schools matter here, too – they are places where staff and young people come together across social differences of age, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and learn to live together. Schools can help young people make their voices heard, listen to other opinions and evidence, reflect on their own perspectives and take a broader view. They can mediate between voices to ensure that all are heard but that those that are hurtful, offensive or exclusionary do not dominate and ensure that practices of student voice promote rights, social justice, inclusion and diversity.
AGENDA is an invitation to join these dialogues and publics.
Some Questions to ask of ‘Youth Voice’
Who speaks?
Who is included? How do they come to be involved? If they are selected, by whom, and what messages might selection processes convey? What other ways of getting children and young people involved might there be, what are the pros and cons of each? (How) are differences between and among young people taken into account? Who / what might be silenced?
‘Who’ are they speaking as?
What identities are children and young people being offered in this process, who are they imagined to be (examples might be: as ‘learners’, as girls, as boys, as ‘young’, as ‘experts’ or ‘novices’, ‘victims’ or agents, as citizens, as activists…)? How are they invited to see themselves? How might these identities relate to other identities they have, in and out of school? What role models do or might they have?
What are they speaking about?
What topics are considered suitable for voice? Are some areas off-limits, explicitly or implicitly? What is contested / contestable? What is the role of children and young people’s prior knowledge, interests, experience, their lives outside as well as inside school, in this process?
How are they speaking?
How might different approaches, materials or technologies affect what is said and how? Is creative communication (through music, art, film) given space, or are predominantly traditional academic modes (formal talk or writing) prioritised? What feelings are allowed expression: is there space for rage, humour, frustration, doubt, confusion? How are children and young people helped to gain the skills to reflect on their emotions? What channels and platforms are used – (where and how) do social media figure? What artefacts does this voice generate and how do they circulate?
Who are they speaking to?
Who is the audience? What relationships are established? What kinds of dialogue are enabled? Who/what might welcome and who might resist hearing? Who interprets voice and how?
What can voice do?
How does voice make a difference, and how can we account for this? What and how are feelings, capacities to act, connections and new competencies developed through the processes of youth voice?
In what contexts and spaces?
How embedded is this ‘student voice’ in the daily practices of schools or other institutions? What is the organisation’s dominant culture? How do larger contexts shape how voice is heard, received and acted upon, from local school cultures to national policies?
What are the roles of adults in this process?
Which adults are involved – and which are not?
Apply these questions to to some of the examples below:
Some Top Teacher Tips
The process is just as important as the outcome.
Set some simple rules for voice: is it respectful, does it improve things, does it promote rights, social justice, diversity and equalities?
Hand something tangible over - a noticeboard, a budget - so children and young people can really take ownership of it.
You need multiple ways of having a voice – including Lego!
Expand the roles available so that if students are keen they can take something on.
Don’t do it just at the end of the year, get started in the Autumn.
Don’t label by age or stage – group in different ways.
Create a parent guide.
It’s more acceptable when it comes from the children and young people.