Teachers often spoke about constraints that impeded their use of active methods of teaching and learning and how elements of the values of the citizenship curriculum could be found in extra-curricular activities, but that the nature of lessons was not predisposed to reflecting those values. This respondent claimed:
Within lessons, we have a lesson on the school council quite early on. What a good student representative would be and what kind of things the school council discuss.
Within lessons ... we do lots of re-enactment kind of activities like how to set up a pressure group where we write letters to the council and so on but we don’t actually send them or we maybe have a mock election ... Teacher, East Coast College
The theory of how to be an active representative was important for this teacher because only a small proportion of pupils would be able to take up these roles.
Even where the extra step of posting letters was all that stood between the theory and practice of active citizenship, this opportunity is not taken. Although the school had structures in place to support a school council, pupils who served in these roles
were not elected by their peers as “mock” democratic processes are presented as learning resources to be observed, rather than fully participated in. Pupil voice was widely reported to be incorporated into schools but not necessarily as a driver in decision making processes. At North West School, letters were sent, as pupils were encouraged to write to local politicians or the head teacher. According to teachers, pupils therefore exercised lobbying skills through traditional media with the goal of having their voices heard by adults in power. As suggested in considerations of bias, the expansion of pupils’ experiences of different learning resources was seen as linked to their ability to form their own views:
... wherever possible I get views from other media ... so that you have different views presented ... you are allowing people to see ‘if that’s what I think then I’m allowed to say it’ ... if I’m getting something from the class where just one viewpoint is coming across then I’ll play devil’s advocate ... get them to argue about what they actually believe – because I think that’s how you develop your view, by hearing different views ... Teacher, Northern Academy
Creative teaching methods were therefore seen as key to stimulating a thoughtfulness in pupils. Certainly, acts of creativity have been advocated by those concerned with developing pupils’ critical consciousness (Freire 1970) but teachers’
presentation of issues, followed by the use of devil’s advocate, seems to miss an opportunity to use pupils’ experiences to drive debate that has been seen as key to educators’ efforts to shift classroom power dynamics and encourage authentic debate (McLaren 1995; Giroux 2011). Indeed, another Northern Academy teacher was not sure that creativity within citizenship lessons, combined with extra-curricular activities, could succeed in creating a true sense of democracy at the school:
I think there are some mechanisms within the school ... that exist. I’m not a hundred percent convinced that the opportunities are totally equitable amongst all students, we have to work hard to avoid that syndrome of the keen students always being put forward to represent the views of the majority. How you do that I’m not exactly sure ... I’m aware that some students are more confident in speaking in class, some like writing it down so I need to be careful about knowing my class ... Teacher, Northern Academy
It was therefore seen as difficult to reconcile individual needs with a whole school approach to create an environment in which pupils are truly empowered, rather than
subjected to structures that represent token involvement. This was a matter for some considerable contemplation at Northern Academy. At South East High, however, teachers were less perturbed:
... I’m probably not the best person to ask cos as a school [pupil voice] is done by one of the assistant heads ... Because citizenship is a discrete lesson, we do it as a lesson and we do raise their awareness in the lesson that they have a voice and the ways that they can express their voice ... we don’t do much on the active citizenship in lessons because it’s often too difficult, you know, logistically, to organise and arrange these things, which is something we could do better but it’s always a bit of a headache. Teacher, South East High
Pupil voice was seen here as a concept for pupils to be “aware” of but the “active citizenship in lessons” that would realise a commitment to its expression is lacking.
It is particularly interesting that, although this teacher designed the school’s citizenship curriculum, he sees pupil voice as isolated in the remit of another member of staff. His colleague confirmed that citizenship and pupil voice are not necessarily connected at South East High, indeed, he had not “consciously thought about whether I’m empowering them to do anything within school”. He related this to teaching citizenship classes only fortnightly, which meant pupils were less familiar to him and, in any case, pupil voice was formalised in a “committee almost”
that served as a forum for the whole school. He reported that “obviously the citizenship lessons aren’t really linked to that at all” and had not thought of pupil voice in the context of (citizenship) lessons. Not “knowing” pupils is an understandable barrier to addressing their empowerment (as knowing one’s class is seen as an essential part of encouraging participation at Northern Academy) and this teacher therefore saw pupil voice as better delegated to extra-curricular activities.
At Midlands Community School, pupil voice was spoken of as a more considered element of learning. This teacher identified the importance of recognising and valuing pupil voice within school as setting young people’s expectations of being listened to:
... to enable someone to feel empowered they need to feel they are valued and that comes through encouraging them to volunteer their opinion and then to seek to val- not validate – that opinion – to make that person feel that whatever they’ve said has got a valuable contribution to play in the conversation that we’re having ... then
they’re more likely to say what they think as their opinion to everything, whether it be deciding to be bothered to vote in a general election ... if that person feels that their opinion is going to be listened to ... that there will be change as well ... then hopefully they’ll take that away from this school and use it in their adult life.
Teacher, Midlands Community
In this teacher’s view, her pupils were therefore invested with a confidence that allowed them to become agents of social change through their belief in the relevance of their own opinions to the world around them, which allowed them to see themselves as valued citizens. It was generally observed, however, that the lives of present-day pupils did not provide these opportunities, as this teacher opined:
Schools don’t get it, they don’t understand pupil voice ... You might be able to influence and have a say, perhaps we could talk about lobbying and pressure groups, but it would be foolish to try and set that up. I think at times, citizenship education, if it’s not careful, opens the door for pupils only to slam it in their face ...
if we’re not careful they’ll become disaffected because they’ve started to engage only to find that they’re not allowed to. Teacher, North West School
For this teacher, pupil voice must pervade both school learning environments and young people’s experiences outside school. He believed pupils should feel free to express whatever was important to them rather than choose from a menu of issues of interest to adults. It is interesting that his interpretation of raising expectations requires a particular climate of valuing young people’s contributions in society, whereas the teacher at Midlands Community School saw expectation of being part of public life as, in itself, opening doors to participation. Another teacher at Midlands Community School, however, points out inconsistencies within the school that may hamper such empowerment when pupils felt change was needed:
... a lot of the things we do are maybe imaginary letters but sometimes if they’re focused on something within our community – cos obviously we can’t always do the taking action part of it because you know, sometimes you don’t have the time or the resources to put into that within a lesson framework so that will pass on to the school council ... we encourage the kids to translate it into life, which is hard with citizenship in this way cos the school council is sort of not curriculum-bound ...
sometimes we find lessons restrictive on the action that the kids can take and so
that’s why we create fictional places and relate it to our own society and our own community... Teacher, Midlands Community
In this way, lessons are seen as fundamentally incongruent with the promotion of pupil voice and this is devolved to the school council. This process is described as driven by a genuine desire for issues to be properly tackled, for which there is no scope in citizenship lessons. Any disaffection from not being able to pursue particular concerns is then avoided by restricting discussion in lessons to fictional scenarios, and where these transgress into issues that are meaningful for pupils, these issues are picked up by their school council representatives in extra-curricular activities.
Teachers saw citizenship education as offering benefits either as a tool to tackle social problems or by empowering young people. Regardless of their goal, a persistent theme of teachers’ experiences of citizenship education was the tension between authentic pupil voice, which teachers tended to express a commitment to, and a preoccupation with ‘proper’ classroom conduct, most notably the need for
‘balance’; which was considered a particular challenge presented by the subject’s attention to opinion. Across the sample, balanced discussion, with clear boundaries for what may be said and an understanding that it would go no further, was considered key to teaching citizenship. Together with a theoretical understanding of pupil voice, this was thought to foster the attributes of a rounded citizen: one who understood that a variety of perspectives on a topic might co-exist. Pupils were not depicted as having any particular commitment to a perspective as discussion, initiated by the teacher, was merely a learning exercise to introduce young people to the supposedly adult concept of the political. The relevance of personal views or pupils’ suggestions of alternative methods of participation in public life was therefore limited and hence these were either said to be discouraged or did not figure in teachers’ accounts.