Pride and privilege: the affective dissonance of student voice

ABSTRACT

Student voice has been heralded as a practice that provides all children with the opportunity to exercise their right to participate in matters affecting them. However, a common research concern is that not all student voices are consistently or comprehensively attended to. What is often under scrutinised is how this uneven distribution of opportunities that students have to voice may be felt by students, in particular by those who have the opportunity to voice. This paper examines a point of perplexity in data generated with members of student representative councils who participated in focus groups. These focus groups were conducted as part of a study that evaluated a primary school student voice programme facilitated by an external provider. We found that participants’ feelings about the ‘privilege’ of being involved in student voice practice belied their assertions about student voice as a ‘right’ that all students have. Claire Hemmings’ concept of affective dissonance is used to guide our thinking about this disparity between what students think and feel about voicing. We argue for the importance of attending to how students feel about voicing as how they feel may impact on their potential to act as agents of change.

KEYWORDS:

• Student voice
• children’s rights
• primary schools
• affect
• affective dissonance
• solidarity

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which this research was conducted: the Wurundjeri and Wadawurrung people of the Kulin nations, and pay respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We thank the anonymous peer reviewers and the editor for their constructive feedback and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ICSEA value for a school provides an indication of the socio educational backgrounds of its student body the state average is set at 1000; schools with an index above 1000 are relatively advantaged, and schools with an index below 1000 are relatively disadvantaged.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the VicSRC (funded by Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, State Government of Victoria).