Student Voice, Schooling, and the Audit Culture

Introduction

A thoughtful and serious consideration of student voice can yield substantial benefits for schools, teachers, and students. Linked to the idea of schools as democratic communities, such consideration fosters students’ feelings of inclusion, validation, and agency. In thinking about these benefits, however, it is important to examine the location of student voice within the parameters of audit currently shaping the culture of schools. Within these parameters, the external accountabilities of standardized tests have become the measure of school improvement and excellence. Such accountabilities have narrowed school priorities to raising test attainment and reduced both schools and students to “auditable commodities” – their worth and value measured and assessed against quantifiable standards and targets. This is a climate of competitive individualism where students are living an existence of calculation, constantly measuring themselves against a narrow vision of ideal...