Carol A. Taylor

Theorizing student voice: values and perspectives

This article explores some of the core values which underpin student voice work. We are in the very early stages of trying to understand the values that surround student voice and hope to develop these understandings by drawing on the work of various educational theorists. Throughout the article we examine some of the complexities that arise in theorizing student voice, and allude to the practical implications of the values in the context of student voice work in schools and the implications to school improvement.

Student voice: theorising power and participation

The paper considers theoretical notions of power in relation to student voice. As an action‐oriented practice some aspects of student voice have received little theorisation as yet. This paper aims to contribute to a growing body of work on student voice which is addressing its current theoretical under‐elaboration. It does so by concentrating on the dimension of power. The central argument is that power is a significant factor in shaping both the philosophical underpinnings of student voice work and the practical assumptions which are made about what is possible in student voice work. The paper focuses on the British context. It examines the theoretical legacy student voice has inherited from radical pedagogy and places a critical spotlight on the notions of ‘empowerment’ and ‘dialogue’. It ends with a consideration of postmodernist notions of power which the authors argue provides the opportunity to examine more critically the way in which power conditions what is possible in student voice work.

Material feminisms: new directions for education

The radical shifts occurring across the social sciences make this an exciting time for educational research. New material feminisms, post-humanism, actor network theory, complexity theory, science and technology studies, material culture studies and Deleuzian philosophy name just some of the main strands that call us to reappraise what counts as knowledge and to re-examine the purpose of education. Together these strands shift the focus away from individualised acts of cognition and encourage us to view education in terms of change, flows, mobilities, multiplicities, assemblages, materialities and processes. New material feminisms offer ways of looking at how students and teachers are constituted by focusing on the materialities of bodies, things and spaces within education. They make available new analytical tools to help re-think the co-constitutive entanglements of and between knowledge domains, practices, subjects, objects and things of all kinds. Central to the strands mentioned above is the critical endeavour of interor post-disciplinarity. Thinking ‘with’ resources made available by a number of theoretical fields can widen the scope for interrogating educational practices and problems, encourage new accounts of theory-practice relations and provide a basis for some new feminist insights. As a counter-movement to the increasingly neo-positivist outcomes-based, ever-intensifying (it seems) neo-liberal political and economic climate of education, such a post-disciplinary approach can, perhaps, offer some potentially ethical and political, as well as intellectual, resources. Alongside this, we are seeing the emergence of ‘post-qualitative research’ (Lather and St Pierre 2013) in terms of new methodological orientations that some refer to as ‘New Empiricism’. This special issue on material feminisms can be read in relation to these broader theoretical and methodological currents. In this special issue, authors draw on Karen Barad’s (2007) work in particular as well as Alaimo and Hekman (2008), Bennett (2010), Coole and Frost (2010) and others, as springboards for thinking about educational practices in new ways. All the authors share an orientation towards new feminist materialisms as a means to ‘establish a radical break with both universalism and dualism as they theorise the co-constitutiveness of cultural discourse and materiality’ (Lenz Taguchi 2013, 707). Barad’s (2007, 3) insight that ‘matter and meaning are not separate entities’ is crucial and addresses a question often posed about ‘new’ material feminisms, namely what is new about ‘new’ materialism? But first, claims about newness have to be put in context. While ‘new’material feminisms offer innovative ways of conceptualising and analysing issues about gender inequality, discrimination and violence (symbolic and not) in education, we recognise that these concerns have always been central to feminism. The perception of ‘newness’ is, as Jones and Kawehau Hoskins (2013) remind us, conditioned by culture, history and place. For example, in traditional Maori thought the human-natural world is an

Student Voice as a Contested Practice: Power and Participation in Two Student Voice Projects.

This article applies theoretical understandings of power relations within student voice work to two empirical examples of school-based student voice projects. The article builds on and refines theoretical understandings of power and participation developed in previous articles written by the authors. The first article argued that at the heart of student voice work are four core values: communication as dialogue; participation and democratic inclusivity; the recognition that power relations are unequal and problematic; and the possibility for change and transformation (Robinson & Taylor, 2007); the second article focused on a theorization of power and participation within student voice work (Taylor & Robinson, 2009). This article explores how power and participation manifest themselves within the operation of student voice projects and considers the micro-processes at play when implementing student voice work within schools. The article concludes by questioning whether student voice work provides a genuine means through which change in schools is initiated.

Objects, bodies and space: gender and embodied practices of mattering in the classroom

This article focuses on objects, bodies and space to explore how the mundane materialities of classrooms do crucial but often unnoticed performative work in enacting gendered power. Drawing on ethnographic data from a UK sixth form college study, the article analyses a series of ‘material moments’ to elaborate a material feminist analysis of embodied practices of mattering. I argue that ‘practices, doings and actions’ (Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. London: Duke University Press), while often hidden or taken for granted, are a constitutive material force in producing what and who matters within classrooms. By highlighting objects, bodies and space as entangled material agencies, the article raises new questions about gendered pedagogic practices. It proposes the necessity to rethink classroom space as an emergent intersection of multiple, mobile materialities, and argues that doing so is a crucial task for a material feminist praxis.

In the fold between power and desire: women artists' narratives

With these two exquisite and thought-provoking books Maria Tamboukou continues to forge ahead in bringing narrative, DeleuzoGuattarian analytics, space and place together with a Foucauldian-inspired genealogical exploration of gendered subjectivities. In the Fold Between Power and Desire: Women Artists’ Narratives provides an analytically sophisticated yet always accessible orientation to understanding the constitution of the female self in art in the spaces of modernity through the ‘stories in becoming’ of six artists, Rosa Bohheur and her portraitist Anna Klumpke, Sofia Laskaridou, Gwen John, Dora Carrington and Mary Bradish Titcomb. In contrast, Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces: Gwen John’s Letters and Paintings focuses on this one artist, providing Tamboukou with the opportunity to delve into the multiplicity that was Gwen John in her all her creative originality, and in the process offer a persuasive and robust counter discourse to the prevailing art historical image of Gwen John as Rodin’s abject lover and reclusive, isolated artist. These two books form companion pieces, and interested readers may wish to pursue the analytical lines they open with a third book by Tamboukou (2010) on Dora Carrington, Visual Lives: Carrington’s Letters, Drawings and Paintings, BSA. While the three books together produce rhizomatic connections between the artists’ texts, narratives, themes and theories, In the Fold Between Power and Desire is the best place to start. The important introductory chapter explicates Tamboukou’s take on narrative and distinguishes clearly what is original in her approach, outlines the multiple theoretical lines she draws on, explains in detail her methodology and, more extensively than is perhaps usual in an introductory chapter, provides the reader with a detailed overview of the life of each of the six artists. It was only during the reading of the middle chapters that I realized how well this latter strategy paid off, working as a demonstration of Tamboukou’s auto/biographical impulse to show how women artists’ creative becomings were instantiated within their everyday experiences, desires and relationships and how, albeit that they were hemmed by gendered constraints, limitations and patriarchal power relations, their becomings constitute ongoing, open and unfinished ‘experiments in life and art’ (p. 1) which effectively, and necessarily, promise a futurity of hope and change. The introduction contains an extended discussion of five important conceptual, theoretical, methodological and substantive issues which are utilized, elaborated on, and

More than meets the eye: the use of videonarratives to facilitate doctoral students’ reflexivity on their doctoral journeys

This article discusses findings from a UK Higher Education Academy project, which used digital video to promote doctoral students’ reflexivity. The project aimed to facilitate doctoral students’ research skills through the making of videonarratives; create spaces for reflexivity on the relations between research, narrative and identity; and consider the opportunities and problems offered by the use of digital video as a research method. In its focus on the relations between reflexivity, doctoral research and the use of digital video the project sought to make a contribution to a currently under‐researched and theoretically under‐elaborated aspect of doctoral education. The article discusses findings from the project, identifies the key role played by narrative in emerging doctoral researcher identities, and argues that these findings provide a stimulus for a more critical interrogation of recent and increasingly performative constructions of doctoral study.

Edu-crafting a Cacophonous Ecology: Posthumanist Research Practices for Education

Doing posthumanist research in education is a challenge. At the present time, education operates within a largely performative context, in which regimes of accountability, desires for a quick and easy relay from theory to practice, and the requirement that ‘evidence’ — the most valorized form of which often comes in the shape of large-scale randomized controlled trials — ought to inform pedagogic interventions, constitute the dominant ways of thinking and modes of inquiry. Posthumanist research practices in education engage a radical critique of some of the fundamental assumptions underpinning these dominant ways of doing educational research.

Student engagement, practice architectures and phronesis in the student transitions and experiences project

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Student Transitions and Experiences (STEP) project, in which visual and creative research methodologies were used to enhance student engagement.Design/methodology/approach – The article provides an overview of three main strands within the field of student engagement practice, and explores the STEP project as an instance of the “critical‐transformative” strand. The article draws on recent theorizations by Kemmis et al. of practice architectures and ecologies of practice to propose an understanding of the STEP project as a practice “niche”.Findings – In thinking through some implications of student engagement as a practice architecture, the article sheds analytical light on student engagement as a specific and complex form of contemporary education practice. The later part of the article focuses on a consideration of phronesis and praxis in specific instances from the STEP project. Working with concepts from Barad, the article develops a conceptualizati...

‘Hope in failure’: A Level students, discursive agency, post-feminism and feminism

This article begins with Pollock’s comment that Judith Butler ‘finds hope in failure’ and its aim is to explore what ‘hope in failure’ means in relation to A Level students’ engagements with post-feminism and feminism. The article grounds its argument in an exploration of how post-feminism and feminism intersect with sixth form students’ subjectivities through the educational practices of their second-year A Level subject-based research. The article analyses empirical instances of students’ discursive agency through Butler’s notions of performativity, citationality, excessive signification and resignification to consider the complex, multiple and creative ways in which sixth form students produce themselves as viable gendered subjects in relation to post-feminist and feminist discourses. The analysis considers both how discourse regulates and conditions students’ relations with post-feminism and feminism and how discourse contains the possibilities for the subject to refuse the refusal of feminism in popular culture. Through its analysis of how students use their discursive agency to claim a feminist identity, and how these uses constitute transgressive practices, the article explores the political significance of identifications with feminism in doing gender differently. It ends with an argument for the re-consideration of the apparently assured popular cultural ‘failure’ of feminism in post-feminist neoliberal times.