Articulating student voice and facilitating curriculum agency

Abstract

Since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the UK in 1994 much has been made in education policy of consulting with young people about their educational experiences. This article takes Arnot and Reay's notion of pedagogic voices to provide a critical framework to examine the different voices produced within a curriculum development project entitled ‘Young Peoples’ Geographies’ (YPG). It discusses the extent to which this initiative has enabled school students to bring their own voices, and their common-sense knowledge, to one aspect of school, namely the curriculum. I argue that particular and more inclusive pedagogic practices, coupled with developments in the academic discipline, can go some way towards enabling greater degrees of student agency in school life, while at the same time acknowledging that institutional, social and cultural constraints place limitations on both students and teachers.

Keywords:

• curriculum making
• pedagogic voice
• student voice
• young people's geographies

Notes

1. The Action Plan for Geography was funded by the government to enable the Geographical Association and the Royal Geographical Society to support the professional development of geography teachers. Eight different projects were designed to contribute to this task and an evaluation report can be found at http:// www.geography.org.uk/projects/actionplanforgeography; the YPG project can be found at http://www.geography.org.uk/project/youngpeoplesgeographies.

2. All evaluation reports for the project can be found on the YPG website at: http://www.youngpeoplesgeographies.co.uk/

3. For more see Valentine (1996); James and Christensen (2007); and James and Prout (1997).

4. For a recent overview see Evans (2008) and Cook and Griffiths (n.d.).

5. See the special edition of Children's Geographies 5, no. 3 (August 2007).

6. For more on curriculum making see Lambert and Morgan (2010).