This work interrupts the current "consulting students" discourse that
positions students as service clients and thus renders more problematic
the concept of student voice in ways that it might be sustained as a
democratic process. It looks at student voice holistically across realms
of classroom practices, higher education, practitioner inquiry and
policy formulation. The authors render problematic the "empowerment"
rhetoric that is the dominant and insufficient narrative justifying
consulting children and young people. They explore the many
contradictions and ambiguities associating with recruiting and
encouraging them to participate and the varying impacts of different
circumstances on the ways in which student voice projects are enacted.
They perceive that it is possible for student voice projects to be
subverted from both above and below as varying stakeholders with varying
purposes struggle to manage and control projects. Importantly, the book
reports on research that identifies and highlights conditions for
initiating and sustaining student voice and include "beyond school"
dimensions that consider young people as "audiences" who can inform
community facilities, their development and design as well as
undergraduate students in universities. These cases are not reported as
celebratory, but rather act as narratives that illuminate the many
challenges facing those who chose to work with young people in authentic
ways. It both advances methodologies for engaging young people as active
agents in the design and interpretation of research that concerns them
and offers a critique of those methods that see young people as the
objects of research, where the data is mined for purposes that do not
recognise that students are the consequential stakeholders with respect
to decisions made in their interests.
