Michael Fielding

Student voice and the perils of popularity

In this article we suggest that the current popularity of student voice can lead to surface compliance—to a quick response that focuses on ‘how to do it’ rather than a reflective review of ‘why we might want to do it’. We look at the links between student consultation and participation and the legacy of the progressive democratic tradition in our schools and we look also at the difference between teaching about democracy as an investment for the future and enacting democratic principles in the daily life of the school (a commitment to the present). The tension between institutional gains (the school improvement perspective) and personal gains (confidence, a view point and the shaping of identity) is discussed and three of the ‘big issues’ are identified that underlie the credible development of student voice: power relations between teachers and students, the commitment to authenticity, and the principle of inclusiveness. Finally we reflect on some of the organizational implications of developing student voice: finding time and building a whole‐school culture in which student voice has a place.

Leadership, radical student engagement and the necessity of person‐centred education

We currently face a significant contemporary crisis, not just of student voice but of compulsory schooling and the social and political contexts that shape it. This paper offers a typology that seeks to understand and explain both that crisis and the burgeoning of ‘new wave’ student voice work in Australasia, North America and the UK. It suggests a number of ways forward that point to the possibility of developing forms of leadership that encourage approaches to student voice that take seriously the education of persons, not merely the thin requirements of an overly instrumental and ultimately diminishing schooling.

The human cost and intellectual poverty of high performance schooling: radical philosophy, John Macmurray and the remaking of person-centred education

In order to address some of the key underlying issues currently distorting dominant approaches to schooling it is necessary to acknowledge and engage with our broad intellectual and cultural responsibilities currently shunned by contemporary policy. Philosophy has a key role to play here, in terms of both deconstruction and recommendation. Drawing on the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray, this article argues for the need to situate our work within an historical context that requires judgement about matters of significance and purpose, not mere efficiency and effectiveness. It further argues for the provision of a convincing account of the relational nature of the self that will, in turn, provide the basis of a framework for organisational and communal analysis. The particular framework offered names the dangers of a new totalitarianism exemplified by high performance models of schooling currently preoccupying contemporary practice, advocacy and aspiration. In seeking to reclaim the centrality of human being and becoming in any future education policy it also proposes a person‐centred alternative that transforms and transcends the hegemony of insistent instrumentalism in favour of an inclusive, creative community as a more fitting aspiration for education in a democratic society.

Beyond “Voice”: New roles, relations, and contexts in researching with young people

The immediate roots of this Special Issue of Discourse lie in a seminar series funded by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) in England that took place between 2004 and 2006 and involved Manchester Metropolitan, Nottingham and Sussex Universities and the National College for School Leadership. The title of the seminar series, “Engaging Critically with Pupil Voice: Children and young people as partners in school and community change” [RES-451-26-0165] points to one of the key issues that runs through the papers that make up this Special Issue, a concern that the wider context of “New Wave” student voice movements (Fielding, 2004) are subjected to more intellectually demanding and experientially grounded scrutiny than is currently the case. Only then will it help those interested in the field to develop a more critically reflexive praxis that exposes and opposes the incorporation of student voice into the machinery of the status quo. Only then will it offer researchers working with young people new perspectives and new possibilities that both affirm and challenge existing work in a domain that is likely to continue to grow in range and importance in the coming decade in a number of countries across the world.

Leadership, personalization and high performance schooling: naming the new totalitarianism

In bringing together two important contemporary preoccupations, namely the development of new approaches to leadership and the push to ‘personalization’, this paper argues against the poverty of much contemporary work on personalization. In its stead it proposes an approach to leadership and management grounded, firstly, on a particular view of how we become persons and, secondly and commensurately, on a particular view of education and human flourishing. It offers a four-fold typology and practical framework severally identifying ‘impersonal’, ‘affective’, ‘high performance’ and ‘person-centred’ approaches to leadership and management. Having considered the first two it goes on to explore the third and most dangerous organizational type, the high performance learning organization, which currently dominates much of contemporary advocacy and practice. It then argues for what it suggests is a more satisfactory alternative, the person-centred learning community. Having acknowledged the dangers of what it calls ‘the soulful turn’ in leadership and management it then sketches out some of the key features of what it takes a person-centred approach to be.

Community, philosophy and education policy: against effectiveness ideology and the immiseration of contemporary schooling

Contemporary education policy is dominated by a seriously flawed intellectual framework (school effectiveness) which will inevitably fail as a means of educating persons for the 21st century or, indeed, any other. Drawing on the work of the Scottish philosopher, John Macmurray, the paper sets out not only to understand why this is so, but also to offer a positive alternative in its place, namely, transformative or person-centred education. Central to this endeavour is an emancipatory, inclusive notion of community and a complementary understanding of its relation to the necessary demands of organizational and functional life.

OFSTED, Inspection and the Betrayal of Democracy

Drawing briefly on the quite different discourses of schooling-as-performance and education-as-exploration, the paper opens by exploring some of the consequences of the distinction between schooling and education for any system of school inspection. The second section of the paper examines the conceptual and practical inadequacy of ‘accountability’ as an agent of reciprocal public engagement in a participatory democracy. In its stead a more robust, more open notion of ‘reciprocal responsibility’ is offered as a more fitting means of professional and communal renewal. Section III focuses on the relationship between means and ends that is at once central to democracy and so conspicuously absent from current inspection arrangements. The short conclusion suggests we need a radical break from OFSTED if we wish to approximate more closely to our democratic aspirations.

Jean Rudduck (1937–2007) ‘Carving a new order of experience’: a preliminary appreciation of the work of Jean Rudduck in the field of student voice

This paper offers a preliminary tribute to the work of the late Jean Rudduck, pioneer of student voice, both as an academic field and as a potential agent of school transformation. Tracing the roots of her student voice work back to CARE (Centre for Applied Research in Education) and the Humanities Curriculum Project (1967–1972), the author follows the intellectual narrative of her student voice work from the mid‐1990s up to and including her forthcoming (2007) book, Improving learning through consulting pupils, co‐authored with Donald McIntyre. The paper closes by suggesting eight aspects of Jean Rudduck’s work that make a distinctive, enduring contribution to the field of student voice and thereby to a more humane, more creative approach to education in and for democracy.

The Impact of Impact

This is not a fully researched paper. It is a playful, but, I hope, purposeful, very preliminary excursion into territory that is exceedingly serious. It arises partly from my research in the field and my consultancy work with teachers in schools and colleges over a number of years, and partly from my increasing frustration and irritation with the vulnerability of academic work to the language of performance that, as this short piece suggests later on, has much to answer for—in terms of people’s lives, not just the increasingly fatuous, hectoring tone of public statements and policy aspirations. In a nutshell my position is this. First, the language we use to describe our work and our aspirations matters a great deal. It is not a peripheral issue: it opens up some possibilities and closes down others. Secondly, the language of ‘impact’, whether it is used in a research context or any other social and political arena, foregrounds some things and marginalises others and we need to be aware of what is affected by this. My sense is that it valorises what is short-term, readily visible and easily measurable. My sense is also that it has difficulty comprehending and valuing what is complex and problematic, what is uneven and unpredictable, what requires patience and tenacity. My sense is that it finds difficulty in distinguishing between levels of change, between what is fairly superficial and what is, to coin another already over-used, increasingly presumptuous phrase ‘transformational’, between what, in the management literature, is second-order rather than first-order change. Thirdly, I worry, not only that it will turn out to be a blunt instrument which will produce commensurately crude findings, but also that it will draw us further into the mindset and practices of performativity that have seriously affected the young people of this country in ways which are deeply regrettable.

Education as if people matter: John Macmurray, community and the struggle for democracy

The educational writings of John Macmurray, one of the finest philosophers of his generation, have a special relevance for us today. In similar circumstances of international crisis he argues for the central importance of education addressing fundamental issues of human purpose—how we lead good lives together, the emphasis on wisdom rather than knowledge alone, the advancement of a truly democratic culture, and the overriding importance of community in human flourishing. A pioneering advocate of education of the emotions, he champions the development of imagination, spontaneity and authenticity as key to educating ‘the capacity for change itself’. For Macmurray, educators must place relationships and care at the heart of all they do. Overemphasis on technique and its typical separation from wider human purposes is emblematic of much of our contemporary malaise. An inclusive, caring community is the precondition of our human being and becoming. The paper concludes by taking some of Macmurray’s key philosophical insights and developing a framework which enables us to make judgments about whether or not contemporary approaches to education support or diminish our lives as creative, caring human beings within a context of social justice and democratic human fellowship.