Abstract:
This session will mark the recent publication of Consulting Students on Classroom Practice, ‘Good’ Teaching, and Teacher Performance: A Critical Account of Student Voice in Contemporary Schools, published by Bloomsbury in October 2024 (available here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/consulting-students-on-classroom-practice-good-teaching-and-teacher-performance-9781350445949/).
The book is about the consultation of students on teaching and learning matters in schools, as part of typical school life as opposed to students being consulted as part of a project that includes some kind of external support, and in this session the author, Craig Skerritt (University of Manchester, UK) will make a case for why there is a need for more critical perspectives in student voice research and highlight the book’s key conceptual and empirical contributions.
Conceptually, new thinking tools and a new way of understanding and articulating student voice in relation to classroom practice, and a heuristic device to aid research on student voice and classroom practice will be presented. Empirically, existing views, practices, and issues as well as hopes, desires, and fears for the future will be spotlighted, and more specifically: the ways students are consulted on classroom practice, unsavoury uses and consequences of these consultations, and attitudes towards the capacity of students to judge teaching and feelings on students being consulted on teacher performance.
The book provides a critical account of student voice in contemporary schools. Student voice is not taken at face value or accepted as being undisputedly positive, nor are schools or the people in them treated as homogenous entities devoid of context. While the book does draw on interview data and the portrayals provided by school-based actors, from students to school principals, researcher subjectivity is central vis-à-vis the generation, examination, interpretation, and presentation of the empirical data. There is no claim to objectivity in this book and it is subjectivity that comes to the fore - major emphasis is placed on the researcher’s own experiences shaping his outlook. The researcher occupies a certain vantage point and sees student voice through a particular lens, and this is reflected in the contents of the book.
As well as hearing from the author, the session will hear a response to this book by Eve Mayes (Deakin University, Australia), and it will also feature a Q&A session between attendees and speakers, chaired by Amanda McKay (Griffith University, Australia).
The book is about the consultation of students on teaching and learning matters in schools, as part of typical school life as opposed to students being consulted as part of a project that includes some kind of external support, and in this session the author, Craig Skerritt (University of Manchester, UK) will make a case for why there is a need for more critical perspectives in student voice research and highlight the book’s key conceptual and empirical contributions.
Conceptually, new thinking tools and a new way of understanding and articulating student voice in relation to classroom practice, and a heuristic device to aid research on student voice and classroom practice will be presented. Empirically, existing views, practices, and issues as well as hopes, desires, and fears for the future will be spotlighted, and more specifically: the ways students are consulted on classroom practice, unsavoury uses and consequences of these consultations, and attitudes towards the capacity of students to judge teaching and feelings on students being consulted on teacher performance.
The book provides a critical account of student voice in contemporary schools. Student voice is not taken at face value or accepted as being undisputedly positive, nor are schools or the people in them treated as homogenous entities devoid of context. While the book does draw on interview data and the portrayals provided by school-based actors, from students to school principals, researcher subjectivity is central vis-à-vis the generation, examination, interpretation, and presentation of the empirical data. There is no claim to objectivity in this book and it is subjectivity that comes to the fore - major emphasis is placed on the researcher’s own experiences shaping his outlook. The researcher occupies a certain vantage point and sees student voice through a particular lens, and this is reflected in the contents of the book.
As well as hearing from the author, the session will hear a response to this book by Eve Mayes (Deakin University, Australia), and it will also feature a Q&A session between attendees and speakers, chaired by Amanda McKay (Griffith University, Australia).