Expert Witnesses: Voices Of Significance |
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| Authors: | Karin Oerlemans Lesley Vidovich |
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| Institution: | (1) Graduate School of Education, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA, 6009, Western Australia |
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| Abstract: | Michael Fullan in 1991 made the comment that little was known about how students viewed educational change, as no one had
thought to ask them. There is a small but growing literature seeking the views of students on a range of issues associated
with schooling. This paper reports the findings of a study of students’ perceptions of top–down educational change, involving
school amalgamations, closures and creation of middle schools. The policy process was purportedly to involve consultation
with students. The study interviewed students to explore the nature and extent of their participation in the policy enactment
and their views about the changes. Several meta level themes emerged from the students’ ‘voices,’ including issues associated
with disempowerment, and competing social justice and economic discourses. The findings foreground the often messy and contradictory
tensions evident in policy processes. The study found that despite the policy intent to include students, they continued to
be the ‘objects’ of policy initiatives, submerged in what Freire labelled a ‘culture of silence.’ It was the macro level policy
elite who exerted the most influence, using their power, privilege and status to propagate particular versions of schooling.
The paper concludes that students are deeply impacted by educational change and they want to participate in restructuring
agendas. Therefore policy makers at all levels need to make spaces for the active engagement of students in policy processes. |
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| Keywords: | economic discourses educational change education policy restructuring agendas social justice discourses student empowerment student voice |
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