Pupil consultation: the importance of social capital

Abstract

We studied how teachers use ideas that pupils offer when they are consulted. Six teachers (two each in English, Maths and Science) and their Year 8 classes at three secondary schools were involved. In this paper we explore the importance of social capital for understanding the processes and dispositions that underpin classroom consultation. ‘Consummatory’ and ‘instrumental’ motivation as distinct sources of social capital (Portes, 1998) proved useful explanatory concepts.

Our main findings are that pupils demonstrated awareness of how they and their peers prefer to learn and what motivates them, that higher achieving pupils expressed awareness of the perspectives that shape the practices of their teachers, and that teachers differed in their responses to pupils' ideas. We explain these differences in terms of ‘traditional teacher professionalism’, ‘unsustained consummatory social capital’, and ‘developing social capital’. Achieving coherence between ‘consummatory’ and ‘instrumental’ motivation appears to be the key social capital condition behind fruitful processes of pupil consultation.