Non-compliance as a substitute for voice

Abstract

This article considers the effect that student-teacher relationships have on engagement with school and how students go about making their voice heard. In order to do this, it draws upon data from a year long ethnography in an underperforming school in England. The site was particularly useful in addressing these questions as it offered different types of educational provision to vocational and mainstream pupils. This contrast highlighted, in particular, the effects of different types of student-teacher relationships. The works of Honneth, Cavarero and Couldry are used to theorise voice along with criticism of formal school voice procedures by writers such as Fielding. The failure of formal student voice processes were found to further disengage the participants from school. Effective voice depends on relationships based on mutual recognition and cannot be based on simple representation. For the participants in this study, non-compliance became a means by which to exercise voice.