It is quite the time to be a teenager. On top of all the disruption caused by Covid-19, young people are currently facing worries about issues such as climate change, rape culture and systemic racism.
But when our young people have something to say on these matters, do we really listen?
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises children’s legal right to participation; to have a say in their education. We are often proud of efforts to garner student voice data but few reformers look to students as real agents of change. This is problematic.
In response to the sexual harassment culture exposed by the Everyone’s Invited website, Ofsted researchers found that children and young people (and especially girls) often didn’t want to talk about sexual abuse, for a variety of reasons. They didn’t want to get friends into trouble and were worried about how adults would respond, or that they would be blamed.
Yet staff at the charity Barnado’s say young people are telling them that there is plenty that they do want to talk about: children are worried about poor access to mental health services; they want to see a culture of fostering good relationships and access to sex education in schools, where no question or topic is off limits; they want to talk about LGBTQ+ relationships and gender identities.
In response, the charity wants to give them more opportunities to have a say. It is developing a series of interactive digital services so they can hear from them directly, via phones, tablets or laptops.
It’s a positive step to encourage young people to speak up, using their usual language and tools. Meanwhile, education policymakers are busy talking about taking phones away from young people, explicitly suppressing their agency.
Michael Fielding, emeritus professor at the UCL Institute of Education, has published multiple studies over the past 20 years pointing out that when we allow only carefully packaged contributions from students, we risk entrenching existing (potentially incorrect) assumptions and even becoming an additional mechanism of control. We don’t get authentic voices; instead, we hear a synthetic one.
We need a more pragmatic approach to enabling student voice, one that acknowledges our listening shortcomings. A model of child participation developed by academic Laura Lundy, professor of international children’s rights at the School of Education at Queen’s University Belfast, is a good place to start.
Her approach places four elements in rational, chronological order: space, voice, audience, influence. Lundy provides a checklist to support organisations to embed these elements into their practice.
It’s also important for schools to recognise that there is a huge variety in levels of maturity and emotional vulnerability in young people, so an approach that fosters a culture of psychological safety is vital. Strong and caring teacher-student relationships and trust are essential.
To paraphrase John Hattie, a precondition for learning is a positive, caring, respectful climate in the classroom. And listening to pupils and having honest conversations across the school community will reap rewards far beyond that.
Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders
This article originally appeared in the 23 July 2021 issue under the headline “Are we just paying lip service to student voice?”
