Rethinking Curriculum: Pupil voice and agency toolkit
This article has been published as part of the Rethinking Curriculum project, kindly funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.
This article has been published as part of the Rethinking Curriculum project, kindly funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.
What is pupil voice and agency?
Pupil voice (or student voice) and agency came to the fore in education during the 1990s and have since become important principles shaping educational thinking, policy and practice in the UK and internationally. British education researcher, Jean Rudduck, was one of the first proponents of pupil voice and her work was initially focused on pupil voice as a consultation strategy, regarding pupils as ‘expert witnesses’ on teaching and learning (Rudduck and McIntyre, 2007). Later on, Rudduck and colleagues widened the notion of pupil voice, describing it as way of giving children and young people more active participation in their education. Pupil voice has now become an umbrella term covering a set of interrelated ideas. Some see pupil voice primarily as a focus for respecting children’s rights in schools (Lundy, 2007), whilst others consider it as being fundamental to democratic education (Biddulph et al, 2023). In the UK, it has been associated with school improvement initiatives as means of identifying strategies for improving teaching and learning (Rudduck and McIntyre, 2007). Pupil voice has also shaped pedagogical approaches such as dialogic teachingThe effective use of talk for teaching and learning, involving ongoing talk between teachers and students and oracy (Alexander, 2012).
According to researchers, Manyukhina and Wyse the term ‘pupil agency’ is inseparable from pupil voice: “Pupil agency has been defined as ‘giving students voice and choice in how they learn” (Manyukhina and Wyse, 2019: 224). However, pupil agency has inward and outward-facing faces, referring to an individual pupil’s personal identity as well as their capacities for active engagement in their learning (Larsen-Freeman et al, 2021: 2).
Robin Alexander, Director of the Cambridge Primary Review, suggested that pupil voice and agency are fundamental to effective teaching and learning: “The children’s voices approach has a clear role to play in developing more effective teaching and learning because it offers a model of learning premised on active engagement and dialogue” (Alexander, 2012:150).
References
Alexander R (Ed) (2012) Children, Their World, Their Education: Final Report and Recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review. Abingdon: Rouledge.
Biddulph J, Rolls L and Flutter J (Eds) (2023) Unleashing Children’s Voices in New Democratic Primary Education. Abingdon: Routledge.
Lundy L (2007) ‘Voice” is not enough: Conceptualising Article 12 of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. British Educational Research Journal 33(6): 927-942
Manyukhina Y and Wyse D (2019) Learner agency and the curriculum: A critical realist perspective. The Curriculum Journal 30(3): 223-243.
Rudduck J and McIntyre D (2007) Improving Learning Through Consulting Pupils. Abingdon: Routledge.
Tools and resources
As part of the Rethinking Curriculum project, we have created a number of bespoke resources to develop your understanding of pupil voice and agency. These resources are designed to explore the research evidence underpinning this approach, understand what this could look like in practice and make informed decisions about whether this might be appropriate for your school and students.
We encourage you to engage with the following:
Read our research review (to follow)
Dr Julia Flutter summarises some of the research evidence around pupil voice and agency, outlining the impact and implications for primary practice.
Read this article
Dominic Wyse and Yana Manayukina, of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (0-11 Years), draw upon both research and lived experiences of how pupil voice can be used to develop an inclusive and representative curriculum. At the end of the article, the authors offer a list of useful recommendations for practitioners’ considering adopting this approach
Watch this webinar
We hosted a webinar with school leaders, expert practitioners and consultants – Alison Body, Karl Cross, Rachel Tomlinson and Emmanuel Awoyelu – to share insights and experiences about implementing a curriculum that is informed by and/or promotes pupil voice and agency. This recording could be re-watched with your school leadership or teaching teams to begin to explore the purpose and application of a curriculum centred around promoting pupil agency. To support with this, we have prepared a range of reflective questions to facilitate discussion and consider actions forward.
Use this evaluation tool (to follow)
We have created an evaluation tool to be used with your school leadership teams to develop understanding of where your current curriculum is in terms of introducing and embedding a focus on pupil voice and agency. The aim of using this tool is to celebrate and acknowledge the work you are already doing but also to refine actions going forward.
This tool could help with reviewing the curriculum at a whole school level, ensuring that expectations of experiences within the curriculum are relevant and catered for effectively. It could also support teacher development in the planning and application of the delivery methods.
This tool is intended to be used alongside the Rethinking Curriculum Evaluation Framework to be launched in December 2024. Click here for further information.
Use this document to explore how this approach aligns with the National Curriculum
As part of this project, schools asked for a tool to map how specific curriculum approaches aligned with the current National Curriculum. We invite you to use this document to further develop and refine your curriculum vision.
Go further with our reading and resources list
We have created a list of further reading and resources to deepen your understanding of developing a curriculum. These include academic research, case studies and webinars. We have ensured that all resources are open access or available to members of The Chartered College of Teaching.
