Enacting Student Voice through Governance Partnerships in the Classroom: rupture of the ordinary for radical practice

Abstract

ABSTRACT Student voice is a construct that has come to mean many things to many people. In this article the author is interested in forms of student voice practice that generate a shift in status for students, from passive recipients of schooling to governance partners with teachers in the classroom. She argues that governance partnerships that include students in joint pedagogical decision-making in the classroom embody the radical intent of student voice, which is to disrupt educational hierarchies and generate roles of influence for students. Within an educational context where student voice can mean almost anything – so is in danger of meaning very little – governance partnerships disrupt the ordinary as a starting point for radical practice.