A curriculum for children’s agency, rights and voice

DOMINIC WYSE AND YANA MANYUKHINA, HELEN HAMLYN CENTRE FOR PEDAGOGY (0–11 YEARS) (HHCP), IOE UCL FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND SOCIETY, UK

HELEN BRUCKDORFER, TORRIANO PRIMARY SCHOOL, UK

HOLLY CHURCHILL, BRECKNOCK PRIMARY SCHOOL, UK

The curriculum is an essential element of what children and young people  experience when in school. In England, the Department for EducationThe ministerial department responsible for children’s services and education in England has relatively high levels of control over the curriculum and some methods of teaching – for example, the teaching of reading in primary schools. However, depending on the type of school and its local context, there are still wide-ranging opportunities for teachers and headteachers to create and implement curriculum designs of their choice. The opportunity to genuinely engage with children and young people’s ideas about their education and, in particular, about the curriculum is one of those prime opportunities. 

The enactment of children’s agency, rights and voice in the curriculum is one of the ways in which equity and inclusionAn approach where a school aims to ensure that all children are educated together, with support for those who require it to access the full curriculum and contribute to and participate in all aspects of school life can be supported. Different groups of children require the curriculum to reflect and build on their lived experiences in different ways, so that teaching is well matched to their development and interests. Schools’ rigorous attention to pupils’ agency, rights and voice provides a means for respecting, accessing and learning from children’s experiences and interests. 

What are agency, rights and voice?

Our definition of the concept of agency is ‘the socially situated capacity to act’. In more straightforward terms, this means that people – children and adults – have the capacity to act in the range of social contexts in which they find themselves; however, this capacity to act is enabled and inhibited by features of that context. Students’ agency consists of an individual student’s beliefs about themselves and the world around them, and the social contexts in which they live their lives. School life represents a critically important place in the lives of most children, as does their home life. This means that every aspect of the schooling system, including the curriculum, is directly relevant to shaping students’ opportunities to exercise agency. For example, students could take action and make choices in their lessons, but their potential actions are affected by their teacher’s views on what kinds of action are appropriate. And teachers’ views are influenced by what they believe to be the most appropriate ways of supporting children and young people’s learning. These views are influenced by structural aspects, such as National Curriculum and assessment. Therefore, agency is particularly realised through the interaction and communication between students and teachers, a context that the philosopher John Dewey (1902) saw as the essence of education. 

‘Rights’ and ‘voice’ are important in their own terms but can be seen as related to agency as well. The idea of rights is generally familiar to people in phrases such as ‘human rights’. Children’s rights have a distinct and important place worldwide. These rights are clearly laid out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC; UNICEF, 1990), to which nearly every country of the world has signed up, including the UK. The UN CRC lists children’s rights in what are called ‘articles’, short statements that describe each right. One of these rights is Article 12 (p. 5), which gives children the right to express their views freely, and those views being given due weight depending on the age and maturity of the child. Article 3 establishes the principle that ‘the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration’ (p. 4). Articles 12 and 3 of the Convention are important because it would be very difficult for a school to be regarded as inclusive if it didn’t both listen carefully to pupils’ views of their education, including any examples that made them feel excluded, and act on those views in their best interest. 

A good starting point for any school interested in developing students’ agency, rights and voice might be to start with Article 42: ‘States Parties undertake to make the principles and provisions of the Convention widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike.’ (p. 12) Is every child and every adult in your school aware of the UN CRC? Awareness of the articles of the Convention and acting on them in pupils’ best interests is one way in which inclusiveness can be enhanced.

Agency and curriculum

Curriculum can be thought about at different levels. At the level of schools, one common perception that may prevent teachers from seeking students’ input into curriculum development is that children and young people lack sufficient knowledge or awareness to make meaningful contributions to curriculum design. While there is a lack of research in this area, there are some examples showing that children and young people can make important contributions. For example, a curriculum-making project that focused on geography in a primary school in England demonstrated teachers’ surprise at how ‘the children had much more to offer than they had previously recognised’ (Catling, 2013, p. 441). A research project exploring learner-centred art projects in Norway demonstrated that children as young as four can engage productively in co-construction of the curriculum (Fredriksen, 2010). In a different study, high school students in the USA were meaningfully involved in designing their own curriculum for dance (Vasudevan, 2022). The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy’s (0–11 Years) (HHCP) ‘Children’s Agency in the Curriculum’ project (CHANT, funded by the Leverhulme Trust) is beginning to show how primary school children can have a high level of agency in the curriculum (see further reading for link). 

At the National Curriculum level, explicit attention to students’ agency in the curriculum varies in different countries and regions. For example, Ireland’s redevelopment of its primary curriculum includes a strong and explicit emphasis on children’s and teachers’ agency. One of the early projects of the HHCP was research commissioned by Ireland’s National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) to examine how knowledge was defined and described in a selection of national curriculum texts (Wyse and Manyukhina, 2018). This was one of a series of projects that the NCCA commissioned from 2018 onwards, as they started the process of redeveloping their primary national curriculum of 1999. The work of the HHCP included attention to agency in three categories of curriculum that we established: 

• Knowledge-based (e.g. England): Knowledge is the dominant organisational emphasis across the curriculum as a whole
• Skills-oriented (e.g. Australia and Ontario): Skills are an important consideration, particularly in relation to applying knowledge, which remains an important element
• Learner-oriented (e.g. Hong Kong): The dominant organising emphasis is on the learner, including whole-person development and lifelong learning; this was accompanied by an explicit recognition that a bias towards an emphasis on knowledge is undesirable (Wyse and Manyukhina, 2019). 

A learner-centred curriculum is an example of a structure where students’ agency is more likely to thrive, but only with other aspects that are required to support agency, such as appropriate school policies and teachers’ commitment to agency. Inclusion is not only about what schools ‘give’ to pupils, as important as this is, but it is also about empowering pupils’ agency so that they can actively contribute to establishing equality. The early work of the HHCP in Ireland has been built on through Dominic Wyse’s continuing role as one of four academic advisors for Ireland’s curriculum developments: children’s agency is an explicit and important part of the curriculum framework (NCCA, 2020). Unlike England, Ireland’s national curriculum development process is being undertaken over several years. At least four years after the extensive research and consultation activities began, the new Primary Framework was launched at Dublin Castle on 9 March 2023. This will be followed by a further two years to develop the specifications for the areas of the curriculum. This will be a key phase for ensuring that children’s agency is a vital part of each subject area.

Even since we established these categories of knowledge-based, skills-oriented and learner-oriented national curricula, there have in some cases been changes to the example regions’ orientations. For example, China’s increasing political control of Hong Kong has already resulted in proposals to change Hong Kong’s national curriculum. In Ontario, Canada, a challenge has been made to their literacy curriculum. In a new use of the idea of children’s rights to make their case, a human rights organisation in Canada has argued that the current holistic literacy curriculum in Ontario is in breach of children’s rights because, it is alleged, pupils’ rights to being taught with synthetic phonics are being denied (OHRC, 2022). This is in spite of Canada being one of the highest-performing regions over several decades in international comparative tests such as the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISAThe Programme for International Student Assessment, a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school students’ knowledge and skills). This example and the evidence base for the report in Canada is one of several worldwide to be challenged in a publication by Wyse and Hacking (forthcoming 2024), which will put forward a more accurate evidence-based model for its new approach to teaching reading and writing. 

Agency, rights and voice in practice

The following example features two primary schools where children’s rights and voice are a central part of the schools’ work. Both schools, Torriano Primary and Brecknock Primary, have a long history of development of children’s rights and are newly federated, embracing collaborative working and partnership. The context of the two different schools is providing a very good source of reflection on what can be possible in terms of pupil voice but also the work required to align and progress their work on concepts of agency, rights and voice.

The starting point for Torriano Primary School, and a good starting point for any headteacher or other senior leader considering working on pupil voice, was to reflect on what student rights are and to consider why children and young people’s voices should be heard and acted on. Having discussed these ideas with all members of the school community, there are many options. Small steps forward and ‘quick wins’ are important but, to achieve the strongest positive impacts on pupils, there needs to be a sustained journey of whole-school development. An important support for Torriano’s approach to voice, rights and agency was their involvement in the UNICEF Rights Respecting Network from 2009. 

The UNICEF UK’s Rights Respecting Schools Award started in 2004. In order to be accredited as a Rights Respecting School, schools are supported through the process via training, the development of curriculum planning and, ultimately, an assessment by a child rights professional, who will accredit the school. 

Many schools already have student councils, and if not then setting one up can be       another very important starting point for student voice. There are also other kinds of structures that can help schools to commit to student voice – for example, the pupil ambassadors and buddies systems that Brecknock has set up. These structures enable children’s voices to be heard authentically, influencing policy and guidance in their school. Most importantly, it gives them the agency to implement it – for example, a Playground Charter that is underpinned by the right to be safe and the right to a childhood. However, it is not only the presence of the structures that make the difference: it is also the ways in which students’ views are taken seriously and acted on by teachers and other school staff that are important. Students need to see examples of where their views have made a material difference to their lives in school. 

Teachers at Torriano and Brecknock have prioritised oral language as part of the knowledge that pupils and teachers need to ensure that when children express their views they do so in accurate, productive and respectful ways. A discussion by the federation’s pupil School Parliament highlighted various aspects. This parliament operates across the school federation, widening the children’s remit for contributing to community-based change and addressing meaningful challenges and issues for them in their local context. As is always the case, some students are more confident to voice their opinions than others. Understanding this aspect of group dynamics is an essential part of supporting student voice. Teacher facilitators are skilled in encouraging all students to contribute their views in discussions. Some pupils use phrases that have been introduced to them to help them more formally structure their contributions – phrases such as ‘building on what X said, I think that…’. Children are taught sentence stems and structures to support both exploratory and presentational talk. When the topic of homework was introduced to the discussion, the pupils showed their ability to appreciate the pros and cons of homework, with some making impassioned speeches and debating different opinions. At least two pupils did not contribute until the very end of the discussion, and then both made profound points. Other students, having started speaking, felt comfortable to stop and rethink an idea, because they felt that their initial point had not been fully thought through. In a final vote of about 20 pupils and adults, there was a dead heat on whether homework should be abolished or not! The schools value talk and establish the conditions for what they see as high-quality talk. This evidence-based practice has been drawn from the work of Vrikki et al. (2019), which has promoted the use of dialogic teachingThe effective use of talk for teaching and learning, involving ongoing talk between teachers and students. This approach is also championed by organisations such as Voice 21 and links to work by the Education Endowment Foundation around the importance of high-quality talk in the classroom (EEF, nd). Torriano is a Centre of Excellence for oracy teaching, using the Voice 21 benchmarks and framework to support children’s linguistic and cognitive development. 

The detail of curriculum, such as programmes of study, lesson planning and levels of learning, is an area where much less is known about how pupils can be enabled to have agency. In some schools, innovative approaches to involving pupils in planning their curriculum are used. An example of such work is provided in the Chartered College of Teaching (CCT) Impact resources (Manyukhina et al., 2020). In the CCT example, at the beginning of each term pupils are consulted on the kinds of things that they would most like to learn, and then these ideas are shaped by teachers to become a coherent focus that links as many of the ideas as possible. This focus forms the basis for planning the curriculum for that term. In lessons, pupils are encouraged to make informed choices about what activities they select to work on, what level of challenge they want in terms of levels of knowledge, where they work on these and whom they collaborate with. Progression in their learning is something that children have an active role in monitoring, and something that is beneficial for their metacognitive understanding. 

To summarise, we end this piece with a list of recommendations as being important for developing voice, agency and rights:

• Open up discussions with all relevant people in the school community about what voice, agency and rights are, and why acting on these might benefit the pupils and community
• Learn from published accounts and visits to other schools to find out more about possibilities
• Consider joining the Rights Respecting Network
• Reflect on teaching styles and particularly teacher–student interaction as an important vehicle for supporting student voice
• Engage with students from the start of the school’s development of voice, agency and rights
• Set up or modify structures such as school councils to enhance voice, agency and rights
• Redevelop the school’s policy on oral language to ensure that pupils are given tools to help them exercise voice and agency
• Formally review, at least annually, the extent to which students feel that they have a voice and that positive changes to their school lives have occurred.

Further reading

• Research on children’s agency is an important theme of the research of the HHCP: www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/helen-hamlyn-centre-pedagogy-0-11-years
• Read more about the Children’s Agency in the National Curriculum project (CHANT) here: www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/helen-hamlyn-centre-pedagogy-0-11-years/childrens-agency-national-curriculum
• You can read more about the definition of agency in this blog post: www.bera.ac.uk/blog/childrens-agency-what-is-it-and-what-should-be-done
• You can see a description of the process of becoming accredited as a Rights Respecting School here: www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/the-rrsa/what-is-a-rights-respecting-school
• For readers interested in more research on agency, the journal Education 3–13 has a recent special issue on this subject: www.tandfonline.com/toc/rett20/50/4

References

Catling S (2013) Teachers’ perspectives on curriculum making in primary geography in England. The Curriculum Journal 24(3): 427–453.

Dewey J (1902).The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 

Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (nd) Oral language interventions. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/oral-language-interventions (accessed 30 March 2023).

Fredriksen BC (2010) Meaning making, democratic participation and art in early childhood education: Can inspiring objects structure dynamic curricula? International Journal of Education through Art 6(3): 381–395.

Manyukhina Y, Wyse D and Norman G (2020) Pupil agency in action: Developing curriculum and pedagogy. Impact special issue (Youth social action and character education): 90–92.

National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) (2020) Draft primary curriculum framework for consultation. Available at: https://ncca.ie/media/4870/en-primary-curriculum-framework-dec-2020.pdf (accessed 30 March 2023).

Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) (2022) Right to read: Public inquiry into human rights issues affecting students with reading disabilities. Available at: www.ohrc.on.ca/sites/default/files/Right%20to%20Read%20Executive%20Summary_OHRC%20English_0.pdf (accessed 30 March 2023).

UNICEF (1990) The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Available at: www.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/unicef-convention-rights-child-uncrc.pdf (accessed 30 March 2023).

Vasudevan V (2022) Designing their own curriculum: How youth co-constructed a dance team that opposed traditional student–school relationships. Curriculum Inquiry 52(1): 9–30.

Vrikki M, Wheatley L, Howe C et al. (2019) Dialogic practices in primary school classrooms. Language in Education 33(1): 85–100.

Wyse D and Hacking (forthcoming 2024) The Balancing Act: An Evidence-Based Approach to Teaching Phonics, Reading and Writing. Abingdon: Routledge.

Wyse D and Manyukhina Y (2018) The place of knowledge in curricula: A research-informed analysis. National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. Available at: https://ncca.ie/media/4424/the-place-of-knowledge-in-a-redeveloped-curriculum.pdf (accessed 30 March 2023).

Wyse D and Manyukhina Y (2019) What next for curriculum? In: BERA Blog. Available at: www.bera.ac.uk/blog/what-next-for-curriculum (accessed 23 March 2023).