ABSTRACT

Student voice has been heralded as a practice that provides all children with the opportunity to exercise their right to participate in matters affecting them. However, a common research concern is that not all student voices are consistently or comprehensively attended to. What is often under scrutinised is how this uneven distribution of opportunities that students have to voice may be felt by students, in particular by those who have the opportunity to voice. This paper examines a point of perplexity in data generated with members of student representative councils who participated in focus groups. These focus groups were conducted as part of a study that evaluated a primary school student voice programme facilitated by an external provider. We found that participants’ feelings about the ‘privilege’ of being involved in student voice practice belied their assertions about student voice as a ‘right’ that all students have. Claire Hemmings’ concept of affective dissonance is used to guide our thinking about this disparity between what students think and feel about voicing. We argue for the importance of attending to how students feel about voicing as how they feel may impact on their potential to act as agents of change.

摘要

学生的声音被誉为一种做法，它为所有儿童提供了行使参与影响他们的事务的权利的机会。然而，一个普遍的研究问题是并非所有学生的声音都得到一致或全面的关注。经常受到审查的是学生，尤其是那些拥有发声的机会。本文研究了参与焦点小组的学生代表委员会成员生成的数据中的一个困惑点。这些焦点小组是作为一项研究的一部分进行的，该研究评估了由外部提供者推动的小学生语音计划。我们发现，参与者对参与学生发声练习的“特权”的感受与他们关于学生发声是所有学生都拥有的“权利”的断言相矛盾。Claire Hemmings 的情感失调概念被用来指导我们思考学生对发声的想法和感受之间的这种差异。我们主张关注学生对发声的感受的重要性，因为他们的感受可能会影响他们作为变革推动者的潜力。