A doctoral student conversation with Susan Groundwater-Smith
Date / Time: 1 May 2014, 10am-12pm
Venue: Meeting Rooms A & B
Listening to the voices of children and young people in educational settings: Problems and prospects
Susan Groundwater-Smith
Susan Groundwater-Smith, University of Sydney
The FEDU postgraduate office is running this conversation with Susan Groundwater-Smith for Doctoral students entitled “Listening to the voices of children and young people in educational settings: Problems and prospects”. The session will address problematics associated with the ways in which student voice is being selectively listened to and even appropriated.
The argument is made that the capacity of children and young people to articulate their experiences in a number of domains has been well established and that they have a right to be consulted regarding those experiences in such contexts as schooling. However there are a number of challenges that deserve to be addressed in terms of representation, authenticity and diversity. The case is made in the paper regarding the need to develop consultative procedures such that children and young people may be more fully engaged in participative inquiry in places that provide for their learning, not only in schools, but also in sites such as cultural institutions. These forms of engagement require careful attention to be paid to appropriate ethical procedures that will assist educators in enhancing the opportunities of children and young people to have a voice. As an illustration of such processes the article refers to the work of teacher researchers in a hybrid coalition of schools and cultural institutions and offers two examples of such enterprises. The paper concludes with the assertion that while there has been a burgeoning of student voice and youth activism in the development of sound educational practices and that the prospects are promising, it remains the case that further attention needs to be paid to the complex ecological natures of educational experiences that recognise the many and substantial differences within and between groups of children and young people.
Susan Groundwater-Smith is an honorary Professor in the Division of Professional Learning at the University of Sydney. She is convenor of the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, established to engage in ongoing systematic practitioner enquiry. She works with a range of universities in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands and has published widely in practitioner research: including Groundwater-Smith, S., Mitchell, J., Mockler, N., Ponte, P. & Ronnerman, K. (2013) Facilitating Practitioner Research. London: Routledge.
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