What Counts As Student Voice in Active Citizenship Case Studies? Education For Citizenship in Scotland

Education, Citizenship and Social
Justice
http://esj.sagepub.com
what counts as student voice in active citizenship case studies?: education for
citizenship in Scotland
Hamish Ross, Pamela Munn and Jane Brown
Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 2007; 2; 237
DOI: 10.1177/1746197907081261
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ecsj
Ross et al.: student voice in active citizenship case studies
what counts as student voice

in active citizenship case
studies?
education for citizenship in Scotland
Hamish Ross, Pamela Munn and Jane Brown
University of Edinburgh, UK
ABSTRACT
We analyse a teacher-to-teacher discourse (14 web-published case studies)

concerning participation as citizenship in schools. Many different
mechanisms through which pupils participate are reported (from school
councils to paired-reading schemes and community links). The claimed
outcomes of these activities are also varied: improving the effectiveness
of schools, developing skills, and promoting feelings of involvement and
empowerment among the participating pupils. Significantly, the outcomes
are not radically or politically transformative and are generally contained
within schools existing structures. The texts reveal their adult authors
range of understandings of children and schooling, which help to explain
the relatively conservative pattern of outcomes. However, the pattern
is also explained, in part, by the contested interpretations of both
participation and citizenship, and by the open and permissive model
of education for citizenship favoured in Scotland.
KEYWORDS
citizenship, participation, Scotland, student voice, teacher
discourse
introduction
This article reports an investigation of understandings of pupil voice or pupil
participation in a teacher-to-teacher discourse. Ideas of pupil participation
in education are current and, in part, entangled with the rise of citizenship
education. Both participation and citizenship can be read in a variety of
ways. This study is interested in how they are read by teachers. Since there are
differences in how citizenship education is conceived in different parts of the
education, citizenship and social justice

Copyright 2007, SAGE Publications (www.sagepublications.com)
Vol 2(3) 237256 [ISSN 1746-1979 DOI 10.1177/1746197907081261]

237
education, citizenship and social justice 2(3)
UK and beyond, our focus is specifically on teachers, including headteachers,

in the Scottish education system. However, our findings are likely to be of
wider interest.
The texts used are from two series of case studies written by teachers concerning pupil participation initiatives, particularly in relation to citizenship
education. The texts were published online to the Scottish education profession
in general. Given the exploratory nature of this research and the ontological
status of the discourse, making generalised empirical claims was not an objective of this study. However, the text offered an insight into a number of theoretical
issues concerning pupil participation and participation as citizenship.
In particular, we found that pupil participation was deployed in support of
the schools pre-existing objectives rather than being understood as having
alternative, emancipatory, or any inherent, goals. The participation projects
are not understood as being radical in any sense relating to power or hierarchy
in schools. This conclusion is revealed not only in the direct discourse of the
case studies, but also in indirect ways. The most notable of the latter is the collection of the child actors into a single, non-problematic category of pupil or
child, generally homogenous except in terms of age. It is presumably difficult
for teachers (and society) to construct their charges as oppressed, since childhood, whatever it might mean, confers a transient and temporary status (unlike,
say, gender or race). However, the discourse also allows us access to teacher
understandings of the argument that schooling might be where we learn to
resist so that, should we find ourselves categorised more intransigently, we can
do something about it.
While we discuss these kinds of issues in relation to a relatively limited data
set, it is worth noting that we might understand these particular texts as being
produced by teaching professionals and institutions that might variously be
seen as early adopters, or agenda sensitive. The conservatism of the discourse
in relation to active participation might, therefore, be all the more significant.
citizenship education
In the recent past there has been a world-wide resurgence of interest in
education for citizenship from politicians and educators (Biesta and Lawy,
2006; Osler and Starkey, 2005). This is variously ascribed to: concerns over
political disengagement, particularly, in the UK, in the face of increasingly
devolved decision-making; growing interest in values education (in response
to concern with indiscipline/behaviour and/or in resistance to instrumentalist
approaches to education and to moral relativism); a growing need to educate
for an increasingly globalized life; and the development of the childrens rights
agenda. It is likely that the character of citizenship education (and of pupil
participation as part of it), including in teacher discourse, will to some extent
238

reflect its perceived purposes. The current interest in education for citizenship can be read in different ways and as serving different purposes reflecting
the fact that citizenship itself is a contested concept. In broad contrast, the
purposes of education for citizenship can be seen as either liberation (Biesta
and Lawy, 2006) or a vehicle for surveillance and social control (James and
James, 2001).
pupil participation/voice
It is important to draw attention to the different purposes of education for
citizenship while, at the same time, emphasising that a common element in
current citizenship developments is that of young peoples active participation in school decision-making. Osler and Starkey (2005: 25) in their review
point out that the role of formal mechanisms or structures for student participation is a strongly represented theme in the literature. However, the
potentially diverse purposes of these mechanisms and, indeed, perceptions of
the purposes of the wide variety of understandings of pupil participation now
in place in schools, seems to us to be under researched and under theorised.
Harts (1997) ladder of participation is a useful starting point in focusing on
activity that might not be participation and that would more appropriately be
described with words such as manipulation, deception, decoration and tokenism. Beyond these, however, he differentiates participation in terms of whether
children or adults initiate and/or direct decision-making activity. Activity that
is both child-initiated and child-directed is very rarely observed, according to
Hart, because almost any adult knowledge of the activity, even of (non-secret)
play, opens it up to what Fielding (2004) calls the impulse to control. Hart
recognises the possibility of children initiating activity and then including
adults at the childrens discretion essentially recognising and exploiting adult
power. However, he was not necessarily discussing schooling. In schools adult
initiation seems much more likely, at least in the pre-participation moment,
since the institution of schooling is predicated on adult power and decisionmaking. Unlike a community setting where the boundary between adult and
child is more continuous and ambiguous, the school severely institutionalizes
the boundary. This applies not only in terms of authority structures (the children are pupils), but by the different longevities of the actors (individual
children are in principle more transient to the institution than the staff).
On the other hand, participation, regardless of who initiates it, might develop
a dialogical space, a transforming conscientizao (Freire, 1970), encouraging
pupils voices in school decision-making, disturbing what is taken for granted
about the way society and schools operate, both in terms of structure and in
assumptions made about the role and status of young people.
239

constructions of children and the role of schooling

Contests over pupil participation and active citizenship are generally bound
up in how children are constructed by society, and are sited in many places
including, for our purposes, schools as institutions. Given competing understandings of children evident in popular, scientific and academic discourses
(Jenks, 1996; Morrow, 2006), it is perhaps inevitable that there are competing
and contradictory visions of children and young people in the discourse of
participation and citizenship. Recent, sociological theories of childhood maintain that children should be viewed as competent social actors in their own right,
rather than passive recipients of socialising forces (James and Prout, 1990).
In a similar vein, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
advocates a model of active citizenry for children. This is at odds with dominant
ideologies of Western childhood which are prone to stress the incompetence
and vulnerability of children (Stasiulis, 2002), as well as a sequential model of
childrens development (Burman, 1994). We might expect these differences to be
especially exposed in teacher discourse on pupil participation for citizenship.
education for citizenship in Scotland

Some major developments in Education for Citizenship in Scotland have
been recently initiated. These are seen as central to the evolving curriculum
for 318-year-olds, closely integrated with other priorities, and are expected to
be implemented in a devolved, open and experimental way by schools. Most
significantly for our purposes, active citizenship is seen as central.
education for citizenship in Scotland: a paper for discussion
and development
Learning and Teaching Scotland (2002) sets out the key purposes of education
for citizenship and the ways in which these might be pursued in schools.1 The
report has subsequently featured heavily in the major curriculum review and
development known as A Curriculum for Excellence. The report had a number
of important features, some of which are summarised as follows:
Education for citizenship was seen as a key overarching purpose of the

curriculum. It was not seen as a separate subject requiring a specific space
in the school timetable.
The purpose of education for citizenship was to develop young peoples
capability for thoughtful and responsible participation in political, economic,
social and cultural life.
Children and young people were seen as citizens now rather than citizens
in waiting.
240

It emphasized that young people learn most about citizenship by being

active citizens and urged schools to model the kind of society in which active
citizenship is encouraged. In particular it encouraged school to promote
young peoples active participation in decision making and to develop a
participatory ethos.
It set out an agenda for development, recognizing that schools were already
doing good work in many areas.
It drew attention to values conflicts, power relationships, and the importance
of developing critical autonomy in young people.
It recognized that the article was not the last word on the subject and that
there was a need to share experience and ideas as schools discussed and
experimented with the suggestions in the paper (Learning and Teaching
Scotland, 2002).
Accountability and reporting mechanisms, of course, are very influential

on what schools do. Scotland has established five national priorities for school
education, each with performance indicators. The focus on development and
experimentation was echoed in the performance indicators for education for
citizenship, which were developed as part of national priority 4: values and
citizenship. Schools and local authorities were asked to report on their progress
in achieving this priority for the first time in 2005. The performance measure
is narrative, in that schools are invited to report on the range and scale of
activities offered to pupils, which encourage and support the development of
education for citizenship.
Her Majestys Inspectorate of Education (HMIe), which inspects Scotlands
schools, has likewise adopted a permissive approach to evaluating the effectiveness of education for citizenship in Scotland (HMIe, 2003). Thus the background
against which schools were encouraged by their local authorities, or national
organisations to provide case studies of education for citizenship was enabling
and permissive. There was no numeric performance indicator against which
schools were to be judged, such as the number of pupil councils in operation
or the number of young people engaged in voluntary activities. Rather there
was a fairly clear message that schools should develop provision in a way that
seemed appropriate to them, albeit against a general framework of the aims
and purposes of education for citizenship. Furthermore there were no league
tables of school effectiveness in education for citizenship.
research methods
In order to interrogate teacher understandings of pupil participation-ascitizenship against this background, we need access to teacher discourse on the
subject. In total we analysed 14 case study texts. First, we used eight case study
241

texts that were written for The Scottish Schools Ethos Network (SSEN). Therefore, some understanding of the SSEN and the production of the case study
text is needed. However, we can say at the outset that we are reporting a pilot
study that is designed to test the value of a particular kind of data and open up
the theoretical landscape in which it has traction. Our methods are designed to
illuminate assumptions about pupil participation and to contribute to debate.
The Scottish Schools Ethos Network (SSEN) was established in 1994 responding to requests from schools for help in evaluating and developing their ethos.
SSEN had over 1000 member schools, about one-quarter of all schools in
Scotland. The network promoted communication among members in many
ways, including conferences, newsletters and a website. Case studies, written
by teachers for teachers, were a popular and readily accessible means of communicating the reality of particular developments in action, warts and all. The
case studies were distributed to all SSEN members and to all national education
organizations in paper form. They were often distributed outside Scotland and
they appeared on the networks website. Thus those writing them, usually
headteachers, would be aware of the potential distribution and potential impact. The case studies were produced under editorial guidance which set out
word length, the avoidance of individuals by name, the need to support any
claims about effectiveness by evidence, the desirability of direct quotation and
the use of photographs to enliven the text. Beyond this the participatory ethos
series asked for contributions respectively about pupil participation in decision making in the classroom, in the school and in the community. They thus
seemed an appropriate choice for us to pilot an analysis of representations of
pupil voice. Moreover the use of case studies to support developments in schools
is common place and is continuing to play a major role in developments in
education for citizenship in Scotland (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2006).
So the discourse in the text lies between school staff and a wider educational
audience. We thought it might therefore contain some indication of the voice
of the profession. But despite the large number of schools in the network, only
43 case studies are published and these are voluntarily submitted. So the text
we are studying is that of a small, self-selecting population. They may, interestingly, represent the more educationally avant garde, or be early adopters
or be more connected to wider educational agendas. Moreover, despite some
pupil quotations and even pupil co-authoring in the construction of some case
studies, they essentially represent the voice of the adult institution, knowingly
offered to the public. In a sense, the discourse is motivated in ways that may
not be recorded in the text itself. And Fielding (2004) has noted that in speaking
about people we are in a critical way also speaking for them. This means that
these kinds of study need ultimately to be triangulated against the authentic
voice of the pupil/students experience of participation in order to make claims
about the reality and meaning of these experiences.
242

Within this population we have sub-sampled eight case studies (five primary
schools, two secondary schools and one special school). These were selected
from the published total of 43, based on titles that referred to participation
and spanned a range of publication dates. Taking the background literature discussed above as our starting point, the three authors open-coded different case
studies independently and met to discuss them; then each coded the same two
case studies and met to discuss them. An initial coding frame was developed
and the present paper reports on the results of its use, where two authors coded
three case studies each, and one author coded two case studies, thus covering
all eight using the draft coding frame. The advantages of collaborative and team
approaches to coding frame development are well documented (Wasser and
Bressler, 1996).
Our early interest in the possibility of accessing a kind of shared set of educational dialogic standards resulted in some of our early categories focusing on
who was saying what and on behalf of whom in the case studies. But this became
strongly interpretive and the balance shifted toward more literal coding of the
surface or manifest meaning of the reports text. We have retained two code
sets that we identified as the strongest, in terms of evidence, of the interpretive
categories: (1) a visions of children set of codes covering the description of
children in the report (ideas such as age, gender, disaffected or engaged, and
ability, among others, and their relation to participation); (2) an open set of
codes that captures any miscellaneous assumptions we assessed as being
made by the report. Alongside these we have more straightforward categories
of codes: (3) mechanisms of participation (and who initiated them, how participants are selected and who participants represent); and (4) claimed or
anticipated outcomes/purposes of participation. Our findings and discussion
are structured around these categories.
Given that the SSEN case studies were produced at an embryonic stage of
practitioner debates regarding pupil participation and citizenship education,
an additional sample of case studies was selected from a more recent source.
A further six case studies (three secondary schools and three primary schools)
were accessed from Learning Teaching Scotlands comprehensive source of
citizenship case studies, readily available on the web (Learning and Teaching
Scotland, 2006).2 The rationale for this was twofold. First of all, it was methodologically desirable to ensure we included a variety of case studies, covering
a fairly extended time-frame. Second, inclusion of this more recently produced
sub sample provided us with a comparative check on findings emerging from
our original Ethos Network case studies. Although these more recent texts
were constructed on a different editorial basis, they were broadly confirmatory
when coded using the frame outlined above (and one primary school appears
in both sets of texts so we had some handle on the influence of the different
editorial approaches).
243

In sum, we have undertaken a cross-case, thematic analysis of 14 webpublished case studies concerning five secondary schools, seven primary
schools (one of which provides two case study texts) and one special school.
Our study is therefore limited by the presentation that follows as a cross-case
thematic analysis; we lose the kinds of contextual richness (for example of how
different institutions conceptualise voice) that are the source of additional
explanatory power in, for example, ethnographic studies. In the kinds of texts
studied here, the fine-grain of context is lacking. And the number of schools,
and their balance across different sectors, raises questions about how representative any claims we make can be. For both these reasons, we should re-iterate
that our investigation is exploratory and raises issues rather more than it offers
generalizable claims. Within these limitations, however, we identified strong
patterns across the case studies that plausibly suggest that the cases are not
idiosyncratic.
findings
The 14 case study reports (covering 13 schools) provide a rich and hitherto untapped resource for analysing what teachers understand as pupil participation
and its purposes. However, given the small-scale nature and purposes of this
research it is inappropriate to make any claims regarding emerging trends in
our initial analysis.
mechanisms of participation
The small number of reports we studied describe a wide variety of mechanisms
through which young people are described as participating. It is worth noting
that, as with many such discourses, these texts tend to undermine academic
consensus on the uses of words such as participation. For example, in writing
their case studies, some schools have chosen to understand active participation
and citizenship in terms of pupil decision-making per se and others in terms
of involvement in pupil in decisions about their learning. These distinctions,
which help frame the research discourse (for example Flutter and Ruddock
[2004] and sections below), are also sometimes elided in the participation
reported in the texts.
By far the most commonly mentioned mechanism, identified in all the
case studies (primary, secondary and special schools), is the school council.
The school council is discussed in detail in two case studies and mentionedin-passing in others. Most reports give very little detail on which pupils are
eligible to stand for election, how they become council members, who they
represent or how they do so, how agenda items are raised and by whom, and
how decisions are fed back to the school as a whole. Where detail is reported
244

on such matters it seems intended to support the claim that the school council
is an authentic body. The potential significance of this in the discourse is
developed below in reporting on outcomes.
Most of the case studies focused on other mechanisms of participation. These
included formal mechanisms: the co-option of senior pupils as members of
school boards; school or year group forums; working groups to take forward particular areas such as healthy eating. There were also less formal arrangements:
focus groups or informal discussions; surveys of samples of pupils to seek opinions on a range of matters from catering to curriculum and teaching methods.
A very wide range of other activity involving young people was recorded as being
used to demonstrate a participative ethos in many of the case studies, especially
for primary schools. These included: paired reading schemes, whereby more
senior pupils helped younger pupils who were having reading difficulties; buddy
schemes, again where older pupils in primary or secondary schools helped to
smooth the induction of new pupils; peer counselling, particularly in the context of anti-bullying; home-school communication; a family club where pupils
and parents/carers were expected to participate together; circle time; responsibilities for classroom tidiness; independent and after-school study; suggestion
folders; monthly newsletters; involvement in national, industry and community
links; setting and taking forward the curricular agenda with classes; and
community of enquiry approaches to classroom discussion.
In nearly all cases the mechanism itself is explicitly adult initiated or
emerges in the passive voice: there is a buddy scheme. Within the mechanism,
however, young people are evidently initiating activity either on their own or
jointly with adults. This is an important issue, to which we will return.
claimed/anticipated outcomes of participation

A wide range of outcomes for pupil participation in decision-making was
claimed in the case studies.
Where school councils were discussed in detail, outcomes were an important
part of the discourse and are used to develop the idea of the councils authenticity. In one case the council has an annual budget of 2000 and part of the
explanation for this was to signal to the pupil population of the school in general
that the council had power and could do things. The council had: initiated a
review of the content of the personal and social education curriculum; altered
discipline procedures; and was developing several improvements to the
school environment (playground, toilets and lockers). This range of activity
or influence is important in terms of Flutter and Ruddocks (2004) widening
of pupil involvement from uniform and lockers into teaching and learning.
We are unable to say on the basis of information given in the reports whether
council members experienced any conflict of loyalties between the needs of
245

their peers and the needs of the system (Cotmore, 2004: 63), if and when they
became more aware of both sets of needs. What we can say is that the reports
convey a sense of the usefulness of councillors in conveying information to/
from adult decision-makers and legitimizing decision-making such that they
improved the running of the school:
These pupil councils provide a wealth of information and ideas. (Secondary/
Case 1A)
Another reported set of outcomes from pupil councils is that councillors develop
communication and negotiating skills and self confidence. The emphases on the
existence of (1) practical outcomes that affect the wider school community and
(2) on council post-holder development, however, avoid the issue of whether
the council mechanism provides the latter, participatory, outcomes to the large
numbers of young people who are not council members. Several schools, though,
were aware of the need to expand participatory activity (see below) and one
primary school provided detail of council selection procedures along with a
variety of other, mutually exclusive, roles such as house-captaincy, Eco-School
Committee, prefects and junior road-safety officers-the point being made that
including as wide a range of pupils as possible in some participatory role was
considered important.
Perhaps it is the recognition of limitations of council activity (including that of
inclusion) that has resulted in the studied texts great range of other participatory
mechanisms. What are the outcomes of these other mechanisms?
One major theme in primary school case studies was improved behaviour,
engagement, motivation and attendance. The following extracts from different
cases give a flavour of these.
Happier, quieter lunchtimes. (Primary/Case 1B).
[We] have not excluded any pupils for two years. (Primary/Case 1C)
I was able to form positive relationships throughout the school. (Primary/Case 1D:
staff comment)
Typically, this was understood and expressed in terms of developing a sense

of collective and individual responsibility for behaviour, and of internalising
these values:
But we also need to help pupils to internalise the values that we are promoting so
that they want to do better because it feels right to them. A counselling approach
that hands the responsibility for behaviour back to pupils themselves eventually
does result in better behaviour, raised self-esteem and feeling fully part of the
school community. (Primary/Case 1C)
We will argue below that this focus on what might be described as socialization
in primary schools might be understood in terms of such schools understandings
of their role and their construction of children.
246

Other important themes in the discourse on outcomes, which cross all the
kinds of school represented, included the development of a range of skills such
as listening, communication, problem solving, working in a team via curriculum
projects, and exercising choice. And there were many references to improved
pupils self-esteem, self-confidence, empowerment, agency and to generally
feeling good. Several case studies mentioned resulting improvements in
curricular attainment and achievement. Some case studies provided evidence
in the form of direct quotations from pupils of the beneficial effects of particular
kinds of pupil participation. Thus in terms of paired reading:
I used to never like reading out in class but now I can read fast so I dont mind.
(Secondary/Case 1A: S2 boy)
In most of the reports, however, we rely on the authorial voice as below:

The children developed confidence in communicating with adults as well as
understanding better about what it takes to become a good citizen. (Primary/
Case 1E)
Most case studies report that direct participation in the various mechanisms
make pupils feel good about participating and glad that they have done so. This
may well be connected to the reported feelings of self-esteem and self worth
and may derive from the direct, tangible outcomes of participation. There are
rare but important notes of caution: some primary children being overwhelmed
by practical aspects of council membership; a secondary pupil who has taken
a bit of a pounding in a community of enquiry session. Neither is presented
as involving lasting damage (and in the latter case this is claimed to be true because of the safety provided by the mechanism itself).
Another articulated outcome is the beneficial pastoral effects of buddy
schemes and peer counselling schemes in helping children settle in to new
schools and protecting them from bullying or intimidation. There are several
quotations from buddies and their buddettes about such beneficial effects.
It is interesting that the reports seldom go beyond these issues to raise more
fundamental questions about the nature of the school and pupil environment
that might make these schemes necessary. On the few occasions they do so,
the tendency is to refer to government policy on inclusion as raising new challenges for schools. For example:
We also need to develop other strategies over the next few years to promote
positive behaviour effectively and manage some of the more challenging
behaviour that the inclusive agenda presents. (Secondary/Case 1A)
What is strikingly absent from the vast majority of case studies are mechanisms where the purpose or outcome challenges the schools ways of doing
things, which the literature (Alderson, 2000) describes as an important element
of participation. Rather, the sense of outcomes in the discourse was about the
247

mechanisms being used to enable the schools to do what they always do, but
more efficiently and effectively, or, especially in some of the more recent cases,
to deliver on a range of official agendas. The paired reading, buddy and peer
counselling schemes, for example, can be seen as helping to develop capability
for thoughtful and responsible participation in social life, and for helping
others, particularly those in difficulty of one kind or another. The more formal
mechanisms such as school councils and forums had purposes or outcomes
that included improving curriculum, teaching and learning, as well as the
school environment and pupil facilities. In this sense they were perhaps closer
to Flutter and Ruddocks (2004) proposition, of participation to improve learning within existing systems, than they were to any idea of the development of
political literacy and of asking questions about the legitimacy of the systems in
the first place. Although there were some hints of movement toward the latter,
it might be fair to interpret the tenor of the discourse as implying that the existence of participatory mechanisms represented self-conscious radicalism on
the part of the adults and teachers, not the pupils.
discussion visions of children, the role of schooling,

and participation
The inclusion, in teacher discourse about participation, of the above sets of
mechanisms and outcomes might be understood if we had access to the writers
visions or constructions of children and their assumptions about the nature
and role of schooling. The following sections combine our more interpretive
coding of the text, which formed one coding category relating to visions of
children and one open category of miscellaneous and outlying interpreted
segments: miscellaneous assumptions.
age, development and participation

An important idea about children evident in the case studies is a model of
participation based on chronological age and perceived immaturity/maturity
of children. Developmental visions of children are a particularly explicit theme
with regard to explanations of childrens participation in primary schools, although it is also implicit in secondary case studies. In some case studies, younger
pupils (i.e. Primary years 1 and 2, five- and six-year-olds) are characterized
as too young to comprehend issues raised in the context of school councils.
Participation is deemed unsuitable for younger pupils because of their cognitive immaturity and limited understanding. One case study explicitly addresses
the challenging nature of involving younger, primary aged pupils. In this case
study it was also noted that differential levels of participation, most notably
with regard to the pupil council, resulted in certain power imbalances within
the school:
248


One quiet but burning issue was the increasing influence of senior pupils
in making decisions that affected all pupils attending the school. (Primary/
Case 1F)
Some parallels were found between the secondary and primary sector. Responsibility and greater levels of participation tend to be skewed towards older
pupils at the upper end of both the primary and secondary schools studied.
This means that P6 and P7 pupils (10- and 11-year-olds) tend to dominate in
accounts of participation in the primary sector case studies and pupils in exam
years, including S4, S5 and S6 (15-, 16- and 17-year-olds), were identified as
the main actors and beneficiaries of the personal outcomes of participation
(see section above) in the secondary cases.
Only in the Community of Enquiry case studies (from the more recent
set of texts we analysed) did there appear to be no age component to the
authors visions of children. One case study described the approach being used
systematically from Primary 1 to Primary 7, the other to Secondary 5 classes,
further claiming that:
A process which helps acquaint students with the civilised, democratic and
constructive use of disagreement is a powerful tool which would be welcomed in
any sphere of citizenship, whatever the age or social background of the subjects.
(Secondary/Case 2A)
These cases are, however, the exception. While the primary school case studies
tended self-consciously to justify the extent and nature of participation in terms
of the age of the pupils, secondary schools appeared to take this age-prerequisite
of participation for granted. In teacher discourse the level of pupil participation
is linked with hierarchical and stage-based organisation of schools, so that responsibility and engagement are associated with specific year groups at the
upper end of the school. Despite the fact that a sequential development vision
of children is implied by this (in the case of several primary school cases it is
explicit), we see that across primary and secondary schools (i.e. taking the childs
whole experience of schooling), the discourse is at odds with such a sequential
vision of child development. Taking participation as an independent idea, there
is clearly a regression between institutions: at the point of primarysecondary
transition the same (generic) child is viewed as the most competent social actor
in the primary school cases and the least competent in the secondary cases.
This raises interesting questions regarding the nature of school transitions
and continuity in participation opportunities for pupils as they move across
sectors, as well as raising questions about the intrinsic nature of primary and
secondary schools as institutions. However, it also illustrates the hierarchical
nature of schools as total institutions an oft voiced criticism from advocates
of more democratic and widespread participation for all pupils (e.g. Maitles
and Gilchrist, 2006). The case study writers visions of children conform to
institutional boundaries rather than transgress them, which might support
249

similar conformity-over-transgression in the mechanisms and outcomes of

participation.
generic and differentiated views of children/young people

The generalized and undifferentiated category of pupils is consistently
adopted in the case studies, creating a homogeneous image of children and
young people. Over-generalized concepts such as pupils and children obscure the fact that participation may be confined to particular groups of pupils
(i.e. senior pupils) or regarded as inappropriate for others (i.e. shy and reserved
pupils and 5- and 6-year-olds). We should perhaps not be surprised that little
attention is paid to basic divisions such as gender, ethnicity and class in the
case studies (Montgomery, 2005). Reference to other markers of difference
such as ability, academic versus non-academic pupils, as well as disaffected
students, are also less evident. Yet where these do occur, reference to different
constituencies of pupils offers insights into teacher perspectives on the purpose
of pupil participation and in what counts as pupil voice.
In primary school case studies the following categories of children were
mentioned with regard to participation:
Problematic boys who benefit from supporting younger pupils in a school

reading scheme.
Confident and shy pupils/enthusiastic and less eager pupils.
In secondary school case studies the following categories of young people were
mentioned with regard to participation:
disaffected pupils;
academic pupils;
senior pupils including pupils in S4, S5 and S6, undertaking exams, in
addition to a few willing senior pupils in S6 who were young women.
Significantly much less is said about younger S1 and S2 pupils (1113-yearolds) in relation to the secondary sector, confirming the age-stage visions
discussed above. Distinguishing disaffected or difficult pupils in case studies is
closely connected, in the discourse, to outcomes of participation that relate to
behaviour and engagement.
participation, visions of children and the role of schools

Taking responsibility for self and others is both an input and outcome, in the
discourse, in circular relation with participation: in primary and secondary
school case studies participation resulted in improved or improving behaviour
in various ways, including notions of engagement with the institution, its
250

boundaries and purposes; and we have seen above that, in institutional/teacher

thinking (as represented by these texts) such ideas of maturity (particularly
age) are prerequisites of participation in formal mechanisms. In primary
school cases, participation (including taking greater responsibility for selfmanagement) is seen as part and parcel of development and of socialisation.
The sense we got from some primary school case studies was that participation
is therefore in some essential way the meaning of education: a subtle interaction of development, conformity and controlled emancipation. These
primary schools also understood this in terms of developing the citizens and
communities of the future. By contrast, the secondary school discourse tends
not to see the purpose of participation as something that lies beyond the school
boundary in future citizens or communities (or, where it does, it does so more
rhetorically) and neither does it use maturity and development as explicitly as
the primary school discourse in justifying the hierarchy implied by age-stage
visions of children in participation. Perhaps, then, because the secondary
schools represented by these texts may not see basic socialization as a significant
role for secondary schooling, so participation seems to be understood more as
a matter of institutional effectiveness and equilibrium. Consequently, in some
secondary schools case studies, an explicit link was made between pupil participation and the school improvement agenda.
At any rate, neither the primary nor secondary school discourses, then,
suggest that participation is understood as involving the radical Freirian emancipation of an oppressed category of people: not children in general, and not
any other category such as race or gender. The interesting exception to this
conclusion is the special school, whose contribution to the discourse, almost
by definition, understands pupil participation (in society, i.e. inclusion) as the
purpose of schooling, in the sense that marginality and exclusion of their pupils
is the assumed starting point irrespective of age-related maturing processes.
Very often pupils in special schools are on the receiving end of kindness and
hospitality gifts, discos and outings, etc., so it is extremely beneficial for
them to have the opportunity to return hospitality and do something actively
for the community at large. This promotes feelings of mutuality, inclusion and
the feeling of being the same as everybody else. The counterpart to this is that
the community also recognises this mutuality and becomes aware that pupils
with special educational needs have competencies and potential. (Special/Case
Study 1G)
In the mainstream schools, there was little sense of children as marginalized or

oppressed, so that participation is matter of an efficient institution (mainstream
secondary) or child socialization (mainstream primary). These understandings
of children and schooling support the non-radical nature of the reported outcomes of participation.
251

pupil participation as on-going process

However, many of the case study writers understood their schools participation
activities as progressive and on-going processes. The discourse included some
sense of the ups and downs of pupil participation, including raised and exceeded
expectations of some staff who understood pupil participation in terms of risk.
It is also clear that at times staff nervousness was justified but the overall trend
was of adult satisfaction at the success of pupil participation initiatives. Also,
there was related discourse to the effect that participatory initiatives were ongoing, that confidence in them was growing, that more were planned and that
some of their limitations were to be addressed (including the issues of the
inclusion of a wider and younger range of pupils). This idea of progression is
perhaps also linked to the common thread that participation is generally part
of a set of wider, on-going, never-ending, agendas and developments such as
behaviour management and inclusion. Such understandings may help explain
both the institutional containment of participatory mechanisms and outcomes
discussed above, but also the sheer diversity of mechanisms.
conclusion
We could summarize our analysis of this teacher to teacher discourse as follows.
Mechanisms and outcomes of participation in the case studies are diverse but
are presented as being congruent with the schools institutional boundaries
and purposes rather than transgressing them. The discourse can be understood
as revealing some dominant understandings of childhood and schooling that
deny any presumption of oppression that would lend pupil participation inherent, radical, critical or political purposes for the students. However, pupil
participation is nonetheless seen as something of a radical departure from the
point of view of some of the adults involved, some of whom seem to be aware
of critical tension in their on-going work on participation.
So what? Does our analysis of this teacher discourse offer any insight into the
literature on citizenship-through-participation discussed in earlier sections?
Before going on to tackle this question, we want to re-iterate that this study is
a limited exploration of a set of individually authored texts that report on a
range of institutions that are self-selecting and have been sub-selected by ourselves without regard to concern for systematic representation. Moreover, the
above sections report the kind of cross-case thematic analysis that produces
claims that appear to be much more generalizable than the dataset allows.
With that caveat in mind, what insight does the discourse offer the existing
literature?
252

participation per se
In the case of participation per se, we can ask whether the discourse demonstrates
that children are initiators of activity (Hart, 1997), whether it lies close to the
core business of schooling (teaching and learning in Flutter and Ruddocks
(2004) view) and whether participation is understood in terms of emancipation
or radicalism (Fielding, 2004; Freire, 1970) or as a system of control.
Our assessment of the discourse in all but the latter of these questions is
mixed. While it is inappropriate to generalise across cases, we can make some
points about how the teachers who wrote these case studies understood participation. One primary school reported a six-month project for a single class,
making a video focussing on citizenship. The video was produced by the class,
using external professional partners and was eventually premiered at a Glasgow
cinema. The report states:
We had already decided that that one of the central aims of the project was that
it had to be child led. (Primary/Case 1E)
This sentence captures the essential theoretical paradox in mechanisms and

projects to promote childrens participation and in curriculum frameworks
that see children as citizens now rather than citizens in waiting (because the
we doing the deciding does not include the children at this level, even though
the project is to be child led). This is the vexed area of who sets boundaries
about both the means and substance of participation (writing on democratic
schooling has developed principles and practices in this area [see Osler and
Starkey, 2005, for a review]). Within this case study, participating pupils went
on to choose the pedagogy by which the curriculum area was to be tackled and
to reject the teachers initial groupings of children within the class. As with other
case studies, curriculum and pedagogy are open to participatory mechanisms
here. Yet it is difficult to envisage child-initiation of any mechanism of participation within formal schooling. Given a mechanism of participation, the
agenda appears to be set in part by children in many of these case studies, but
rarely exclusively:
Another group wanted to explore vandalism [in the film] and how we should
persuade people not to vandalise our local community. It proved impossible
for any of us to come up with a scenario that did not, at some level, glamorise
or inadvertently promote vandalism to some of the prospective audience so,
regretfully, it had to be dropped. (Primary/Case 1E)
In terms of the final question we are asking in this section, a Freirian emancipatory understanding of participation in schools is not evident in the discourse and the construction of children is not as of an oppressed category.
This is partly due to the over-generalised category pupil but also a strongly
held developmental justification for the hierarchical age-stage construction
of the school as an institution. Finally, the discourse assumes that one of the
253

purposes of schooling is to encourage pupils to accept societal norms rather

than to question or challenge them. Citizenship education itself involves
societal norms that might constrain the participatory challenge:
Education for citizenship has a number of general content requirements that
might be seen as conflicting with the open-ended nature of philosophy in schools,
or might in some circumstances prompt some teacher selection of stimulus
material in the hope of eliciting relevant discussion. (Primary/Case 2B)
participation as citizenship
What does our analysis tell us about participation as basis for citizenship
education in these schools? We can ask whether participation is understood to:
promote re-engagement with political processes; deal with values and morality;
challenge the schools perfomativity culture; respond to globalization; uphold
childrens rights; over-represent formal mechanisms; be central to the purposes
of the curriculum.
There is little evidence that participation in these case studies is intended to
develop critical political literacy, as applied either to society as a whole, globalized or not, or to the school as an institution. Indeed, we found that participation
was linked with political literacy and understanding in only one case study.
However, it is claimed that practical skills of engagement are developed, at
least by those doing the participating, and that some sense of empowerment
can emerge among pupils. But this is not empowerment in the face of a contested milieu. On the contrary, participating pupils are empowered to improve
the functioning of the institution and are empowered more readily to fit in to
it. The values and moral norms, concerning what constitutes responsible behaviour for example, are clearly built into the understandings of participation
represented by these texts, and they are not contested by the adults writing
the case studies. Nor is it expected that pupils will contest them (at least to the
very limited extent that these texts can reveal such things). The relationship
between the schools values and societys values is also viewed as unproblematic
(although in a few case studies the suggestion was that participation in schooling essentially improved local communities in a variety of ways). Explicitly or
implicitly the discourse argues that the ability to fit in to the institution also
improves the institutions performance; in-as-much as values are involved,
therefore, they are not reacting against the performativity culture of schooling
quite the reverse. Given this analysis little if any case study text is expended on
childrens rights as a driving force behind participation. This may be because,
while childrens rights are widely acknowledged in general, their application in
specific contexts, such as schooling, remains problematic.
It is worth noting that much of this is perhaps to be expected. The institution
of schooling includes a relatively permanent adult staff, relatively transient
254

pupil populations, and a variety of legal obligations upon the staff governing
their relationship with the pupils (who are hardly legally enfranchised in the
same way). It is difficult to envisage such institutions functioning in a climate
of annual revolution as each new cohort of pupils arrives. Nonetheless, participation in these case studies is contributing to active citizenship as envisaged
in the Scottish curriculum. Although school council and other formal mechanisms are acknowledged by most of the case studies (in keeping with Osler
and Starkeys [2005] review), many discussed in more detail a wider range of
activity. This partly reflects the permissive approach to the implementation of
active citizenship in Scottish schools. It may also be a product of a curriculum
in which citizenship is central but has no identifiable locus and is left to colonise the schools activity under the direction of the school. We have noted
that there may be a danger that citizenship education through participation
therefore becomes non-transgressive of the institution. On the other hand
such non-transgressive participation could be argued to be at least realistic
of individuals relations with the state and other institutions (and therefore
might even avoid a sense of disempowerment being experienced upon leaving
school). More positively, though, it seems to us that there is potential for the
mechanisms of participation reported in these case studies to become more
transgressive as they develop, as participation feeds the desire to participate.
This working from the inside might ultimately deliver more real voice
over time than an alternative attempt to impose revolutionary structures on
existing institutions. We have noted that the case studies: describe activity as
progressing; demonstrate that participatory mechanisms deliver beyond staffs
(risk-averse) expectations; discuss widening the franchise, acknowledge extrainstitutional drivers, and other such power-relevant matters. While the case
studies may very well represent schools that are ahead of the game when it
comes to participation, they also begin to illuminate teachers accounts of how
schools are fairing in a climate where education for citizenship is firmly on the
Scottish policy agenda.
(1) Nurseries and other educational establishments were also included. School
is used as a convenient shorthand.
(2) Learning and Teaching Scotland is Scotlands main curriculum development
and support organisation and shares the national educational improvement
effort.
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255


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correspondence
Hamish Ross, Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh,
Thomsons Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ, UK.
[email: hamish.ross@education.ed.ac.uk]
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Ross et al.: student voice in active citizenship case studies