EMISIÓN DE OBLIGACIONES NEGOCIABLES CONVERTIBLES

With the increased insistence on student voice at a policy level at the turn of the century a growing awareness of the influence of power dynamics on student voice initiatives has emerged. New wave student voice with its advocacy of students’ capabilities to offer insightful and unique perspectives on their learning and on education more generally, has given way to suspicion towards the diverse

purposes underpinning contemporary student voice research and practice. In this section I examine the call among student voice commentators for examination of power dynamics at play within school-based student voice initiatives variously underpinned by empowerment and neo-liberal purposes.

Commentators argue that the relationship between voice and power has been under-theorised (C. Taylor & Robinson, 2009). ‘New wave’ student voice was “naively oblivious to power relations” (Fielding, 2004a, p. 206). Increasingly commentators argue, student voice research that fails to examine the ongoing workings of power, once access for students to the educational conversation is achieved, is insufficient (Bragg, 2007b; Gallagher, 2008; C. Taylor & Robinson, 2009). However Bragg notes a reluctance for such research and advocacy in the student voice field to “engage with the shifting power relations that have accorded students their new authority to speak, or to be critically reflexive about the means used to shape and channel what can be recognised as ‘student voice’” (Bragg, 2007b, p. 344).

How power is conceptualised conditions what is seen, how social actors are positioned and what becomes invisible. Traditionally student voice research has been framed within a binary have/have not view of power that “presumes a world of subjects (teachers) and objects (students) arranged in a hierarchical relation in which only the former have power” (C. Taylor & Robinson, 2009, p. 165).

Within this binary view of power student voice functions as a practice to empower and emancipate students from powerless positions and by extension liberate society from these binary relations also.

It is this optimistic discourse of radical pedagogy, with its stated desire to liberate and transform people, institutions and systems, which animates much current mainstream student voice practice. (C. Taylor & Robinson, 2009, p. 165) From this perspective the work of student voice is to redress unequal teacher/student power dynamics through notions of power sharing whereby teachers ‘relinquish’ power to their students and in the sharing of power both teachers and students are transformed (Mitra, 2008b). Within this critical

pedagogy framework power is conceptualised as a finite resource that some actors have more of than others. From this perspective sharing power is viewed as a zero-sum game (Foucault, 1982) where gaining power equates to winning and relinquishing power equates to losing. Taylor and Robinson (2009) note the advantage of this view of power is that “it may bring into view different modes of power, such as coercion, domination, manipulation, authority and persuasion” (p. 166) as well as locating where power ‘resides’ within ‘individuals and structures’. However, whilst this view of power has endured within the student voice field, increasingly it is challenged as insufficient to explain the nuanced and complex effects of power within contemporary society (Bahou, 2011; Bragg, 2007b). Taylor and Robinson (2009) contend that “it is only by going ‘beyond binaries’ that power in all its multifarious manifestations and guises might be apprehended and understood” (p. 171). That is, teachers are expected to govern their own actions toward the goal of enhanced student achievement under threat of potential external surveillance and censure by others in authority (Bragg, 2007b; Webb, 2002). In this respect teachers are constrained in their actions also with their “own ability to free themselves to struggle against oppressive and dis-abling systems … rather too unproblematically assumed” (C. Taylor & Robinson, 2009, p. 167).

Suspicion about the efficacy of student voice is raised also in light of the co- option of student voice at a policy level as a neo-liberal tool.

The fact that student voice now appears to be fully compatible with government and management objectives and that senior staff are introducing it with the explicit aim of school improvement, causes disquiet, even concerns that it might be cynical and manipulative, intentionally or not masking the “real” interests of those in power. (Bragg, 2007b, p. 344)

Narrow definitions of student achievement promoted by current policy initiatives can constrain teachers to implement student voice as ‘surface compliance’ (Rudduck, 2007; C. Taylor & Robinson, 2009) with teachers rushing to comply with mandates around student voice without having the time to think through their rationale (Rudduck, 2007) and confusion due to contradictory agendas generating diverse practices under the same umbrella term.

Rather than abandon student voice as a worthwhile project in light of this growing suspicion, researchers have begun to look for ways to problematise their student voice research and pedagogical practice to make explicit the multifarious power dynamics at play. Seminal work in this area includes Fielding’s (2001b)

conditions for student voice that raised questions of who is allowed to speak, when, on what topics and where and the nested nature of school-based student voice initiatives within broader institutional cultures.

As an extension of this examination of institutional culture Robinson and Taylor (2009) drew attention to the influence of macro neo-liberalism policy strands. They cautioned that any student voice work carried out in educational settings needs to acknowledge that student voice work carried out within ‘cultures of performativity’ can be inclined to co-opt student voice to accountability purposes rather than realise its transformative potential (C. Robinson & Taylor, 2007).

This section has outlined the contemporary call by student voice researchers and proponents for ongoing explicit examination of the effects of power relations within student voice initiatives. Contemporary theorising critiques binary theories of power associated with critical pedagogy that influenced new wave student voice when power relations were considered. Suspicion towards official

endorsement of student voice initiatives in education policy has stimulated a call for more nuanced analyses that examine the link between voice and power (C.

Taylor & Robinson, 2009), and the interaction between identity, language,

interaction and power within the student/teacher pedagogical relationship (Bragg, 2007b). This intersection is identified as the key focus for the examination of the relationship between student voice and power within this research and is

developed further in Chapter Three.

2.7 Enacting Student Influence through Student/Teacher Governance