Perspectives on enhancing a culture of learner voices in a 21st century post-primary school

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations 1989) gave children the right to be heard on matters that concern them. Ireland, like much of Europe since the mid 1990’s has had an explicit focus on the learner at the heart of the education system (Ravenhall 2007; Lamb 2011). While the rights of the young person are recognised in policy, these rights have yet to be fully realised in the lived experiences in classrooms in post-primary education settings (Skerritt et al. 2023). This research explored the perspectives of post-primary school stakeholders regarding enhancing a culture of eliciting the voices of learners in one setting. This constructivist, insider, case study accumulated knowledge by engaging with learners, teachers, senior leaders, parents, and the Board of Management. Through action research, teachers focused on one method of eliciting voices in their classes and listened to the voices of learners regarding their views on teaching, learning, assessment and engagement. Perspectives were gathered through anonymous questionnaires, interviews, observations, learner focus groups, a teacher round table discussion and teacher reflection journals. Lundy’s (2007) model of child participation framed the review of the literature, the research design and the findings to investigate a lived experience of interaction with this model of participation in one school setting. The study found that while space is important to give a place for voices to be elicited, there must be a variety of mechanisms in place to elicit diverse voices. Positive relationships are integral to the process. When eliciting voices, choice and anonymity were factors that increased the likelihood of gathering an authentic response. The audience has an integral role in supporting the elicitation of voices, but also in opening a dialogic process to aid and empower young people to participate. Finally, while the learners influenced changes, shared decision making is not an easy commodity to achieve. Influence is dependent on the altruistic adult to encourage habitual voice elicitations so the culture can survive and thrive. While eliciting voices in this case study was a largely positive experience, there were many complex tension revealed including a distaste for the term ‘student voice’ as it does not honour the dialogic process of listening and responding to voices. The study also revealed an anxiety among teacher when listening to young people about teaching and learning. Finally, there are many conscious and unconscious biases that exist which have an adverse effect on the purity of authentic responses.