Four arenas of school-based participation: towards a heuristic for children’s rights-informed educational practice

ABSTRACT

There has been a long-standing call for the participation of young people in decision making in school. However, research to date has mostly focused on pupil councils and is rarely conducted in areas of socio-economic deprivation – the contexts for this study. In national examinations, the schools chosen had higher than average attainments given their catchments. The research sought to understand if and how young people would make a link between their participation rights and ‘doing well’ at school. Using mobile and visual methods, a situated, social-material approach was taken to data collection and analysis. We found participation opportunities were supportive in four arenas: formal curriculum, wider curriculum, decision making groups, and connections with the wider community. This framing provides a heuristic for rights-based participation in educational practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Poverty
• participation
• attainment
• children’s rights
• arenas

Acknowledgements

Thanks to poet, Anita Govan, and storyteller, Claire Hewitt, for arts-based facilitation. Thanks also to our two anonymous reviewers who have helped improve this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The initial project was funded by Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland People’s Commissioner Scotland: https://www.cypcs.org.uk/ufiles/achievement-and-attainment.pdf. The follow-on project was funded by Education Scotland: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/learner-participation.pdf