Papers by Rachel Finneran
Gender and Education, 2024
This paper becomes a mapping of a PhEmaterialist research project, an apparatus entangled with re... more This paper becomes a mapping of a PhEmaterialist research project, an apparatus entangled with re/making the world that applauds difference in education. Feeling-thinking-making with critical posthumanist work, we affirm that school climate matters and encourage educators’ attention to the fluxing materiality of school climate created through everyday schooling events. Daydreaming aptly accounted for our slow PhEmaterialist-inspired theoretical work, a transgressing and transversing of conventional conceptions of ‘school climate’, ‘methodology’ and ‘pedagogy’. Our school climate project emerges as an experimental mapping of eventful research, a slow research creation process where we attuned to emergent affirming pedagogical relationalities. Students worked alongside researchers over six weeks at an Australian community school, enacting research creation in the making of school climate. Da(r)ta created include voice recordings, reflective notes, written responses, photographs, narratives, soundscapes, zines, posters, drawings and maps.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, Jun 21, 2023
It is well-understood that systems of education tend to disproportionately benefit already advant... more It is well-understood that systems of education tend to disproportionately benefit already advantaged social groups. Students have been positioned in recent reform e orts as agents with the right to be involved in decisionmaking on an increasing range of issues related to their education, in practices commonly termed "student voice" in policy, practice, and research. Student voice has been argued to be a mechanism to intervene in educational inequalities and a means to enhance studentsʼ choices at school. Student voice is frequently represented as a neutral proposition: that is, that studentsʼ involvement in decision-making will directly benefit both the school and the students themselves. This apparently neutral proposition elides how, in practice, some students may benefit from experiences of "student voice" more than others. Critiques of student voice, as well as contemporary calls for a return to class analysis in education, compel attention to the potential ways that student voice practices can aggravate existing inequalities. Classed dynamics contour even well-intentioned attempts to intervene in educational inequalities. The dynamic experience of class has shi ed in relation to student voice across contexts and over time, particularly in individualistic, market-driven educational systems structured by the rhetoric of "choice." Further research into the shi ing nature of class in relation to student voice may include longitudinal processes of "studying up" to understand how student voice can be mobilized to cultivate educational advantage and distinction in class-privileged schooling contexts. What is also needed is a renewed uptake of the concept of class consciousness in student-voice practice-that is, beyond voice as a strategy to personalize individual studentsʼ learning and toward enactments of student voice as collective work-if student voice is to disrupt the reproduction of structural inequalities through schooling.
ASCILITE Publications, Nov 18, 2022
Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management
Pedagogy, Culture & Society
Student voice has been heralded as a practice that provides all children with the opportunity to ... more Student voice has been heralded as a practice that provides all children with the opportunity to exercise their right to participate in matters affecting them. However, a common research concern is that not all student voices are consistently or comprehensively attended to. What is often under scrutinised is how this uneven distribution of opportunities that students have to voice may be felt by students, in particular by those who have the opportunity to voice. This paper examines a point of perplexity in data generated with members of student representative councils who participated in focus groups. These focus groups were conducted as part of a study that evaluated a primary school student voice programme facilitated by an external provider. We found that participants’ feelings about the ‘privilege’ of being involved in student voice practice belied their assertions about student voice as a ‘right’ that all students have. Claire Hemmings’ concept of affective dissonance is used to guide our thinking about this disparity between what students think and feel about voicing. We argue for the importance of attending to how students feel about voicing as how they feel may impact on their potential to act as agents of change.
Cambridge Journal of Education
Student voice has the potential to prompt creative and transformative teacher professional learni... more Student voice has the potential to prompt creative and transformative teacher professional learning and practice. However, contemporary conditions of education – including policy priorities and institutional constraints – shape how student voice is taken up. This article draws on data from an evaluation study of a student 10 voice programme (‘Teach the Teacher’) as enacted in two Australian schools. Notwithstanding the possibilities of student voice, reductive interpretations of teacher’s work risk translating student voice into thin practices; the teacher becomes envisioned as technician who needs to fill their ‘toolbox’ and find ‘what works’ by listening to 15 students. Analysing what is said and unsaid about student voice for teacher professional learning in interviews with school leaders and teachers,©as well as focus groups with students, this article explores the problematics of mobilising student voice for teacher profes- sional learning. Questions are raised for those seeking to promote 20 reciprocal intergenerational learning in democratic schools.
Australian Journal of Education
Student participation in school decision-making and reform processes has taken inspiration from r... more Student participation in school decision-making and reform processes has taken inspiration from reconceptualisations of childhood. Advocates for student voice argue for the repositioning of children and young people in relation to adults in schools. This article works with data from a multi-sited case study of three primary schools and students’, teachers’ and school leaders’ accounts of their student voice practices. We consider the relationships between students in student voice activities in primary schools, and the possibilities and ambivalences of representative students ‘speaking for’ other students. We integrate recent insights from moves beyond voice in childhood studies, and from the turn to listening in cultural studies, and raise questions for students, teachers and researchers who seek to encourage student voice in primary schooling.
Australian Journal of Education
Australian Journal of Education
Australian Journal of Education
Cambridge Journal of Education, 2020
Student voice has the potential to prompt creative and transformative
teacher professional learni... more Student voice has the potential to prompt creative and transformative
teacher professional learning and practice. However, contemporary
conditions of education – including policy priorities and
institutional constraints – shape how student voice is taken up.
This article draws on data from an evaluation study of a student 10
voice programme (‘Teach the Teacher’) as enacted in two Australian
schools. Notwithstanding the possibilities of student voice, reductive
interpretations of teacher’s work risk translating student voice
into thin practices; the teacher becomes envisioned as technician
who needs to fill their ‘toolbox’ and find ‘what works’ by listening to 15
students. Analysing what is said and unsaid about student voice for
teacher professional learning in interviews with school leaders and
teachers,©as well as focus groups with students, this article explores
the problematics of mobilising student voice for teacher profes-
sional learning. Questions are raised for those seeking to promote 20
reciprocal intergenerational learning in democratic schools.
Book chapters by Rachel Finneran
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, 2023
It is well-understood that systems of education tend to disproportionately benefit already advant... more It is well-understood that systems of education tend to disproportionately benefit already advantaged social groups. Students have been positioned in recent reform e orts as agents with the right to be involved in decisionmaking on an increasing range of issues related to their education, in practices commonly termed "student voice" in policy, practice, and research. Student voice has been argued to be a mechanism to intervene in educational inequalities and a means to enhance studentsʼ choices at school. Student voice is frequently represented as a neutral proposition: that is, that studentsʼ involvement in decision-making will directly benefit both the school and the students themselves. This apparently neutral proposition elides how, in practice, some students may benefit from experiences of "student voice" more than others. Critiques of student voice, as well as contemporary calls for a return to class analysis in education, compel attention to the potential ways that student voice practices can aggravate existing inequalities. Classed dynamics contour even well-intentioned attempts to intervene in educational inequalities. The dynamic experience of class has shi ed in relation to student voice across contexts and over time, particularly in individualistic, market-driven educational systems structured by the rhetoric of "choice." Further research into the shi ing nature of class in relation to student voice may include longitudinal processes of "studying up" to understand how student voice can be mobilized to cultivate educational advantage and distinction in class-privileged schooling contexts. What is also needed is a renewed uptake of the concept of class consciousness in student-voice practice-that is, beyond voice as a strategy to personalize individual studentsʼ learning and toward enactments of student voice as collective work-if student voice is to disrupt the reproduction of structural inequalities through schooling.
Uploads
Papers by Rachel Finneran
teacher professional learning and practice. However, contemporary
conditions of education – including policy priorities and
institutional constraints – shape how student voice is taken up.
This article draws on data from an evaluation study of a student 10
voice programme (‘Teach the Teacher’) as enacted in two Australian
schools. Notwithstanding the possibilities of student voice, reductive
interpretations of teacher’s work risk translating student voice
into thin practices; the teacher becomes envisioned as technician
who needs to fill their ‘toolbox’ and find ‘what works’ by listening to 15
students. Analysing what is said and unsaid about student voice for
teacher professional learning in interviews with school leaders and
teachers,©as well as focus groups with students, this article explores
the problematics of mobilising student voice for teacher profes-
sional learning. Questions are raised for those seeking to promote 20
reciprocal intergenerational learning in democratic schools.
Book chapters by Rachel Finneran
teacher professional learning and practice. However, contemporary
conditions of education – including policy priorities and
institutional constraints – shape how student voice is taken up.
This article draws on data from an evaluation study of a student 10
voice programme (‘Teach the Teacher’) as enacted in two Australian
schools. Notwithstanding the possibilities of student voice, reductive
interpretations of teacher’s work risk translating student voice
into thin practices; the teacher becomes envisioned as technician
who needs to fill their ‘toolbox’ and find ‘what works’ by listening to 15
students. Analysing what is said and unsaid about student voice for
teacher professional learning in interviews with school leaders and
teachers,©as well as focus groups with students, this article explores
the problematics of mobilising student voice for teacher profes-
sional learning. Questions are raised for those seeking to promote 20
reciprocal intergenerational learning in democratic schools.