Abstract
More than thirty years on from the United Nations Convention of the Child honouring a child’s right to be heard (Article 12) has unlocked a new frontier in ethical research. In education, children have demonstrated competence to contribute with insight to recent policy development in Australia. This paper provides further evidence of the critical role children stand to play in education reform. A post-structural perspective is adopted and underpinned with Foucauldian theory of discursive power in the context of school-based affordances. Visual and dialogic qualitative methods are used to compare the impact of powerful discourses upon children’s affordances in the first year of compulsory school. Three overarching theses drawn from children’s perspectives are summarised; disparity between adult and child expectations of school, adult influence upon children’s perceptions of school, and children’s power to sustain or disrupt a discourse through dis/engagement. The findings illustrate an urgent need for systematic consult with children on issues relevant to them and calls for a public platform for amplifying their unique views to policy makers for response.
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2025
Volume
52
Publication Title
Australian Educational Researcher
Publisher
Springer
School
School of Education
RAS ID
72710
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
First Page
1245
Last Page
1260
Comments
Ruscoe, A. (2025). Responding to children’s voices: The new frontier in education policy reform. The Australian Educational Researcher, 52, 1245-1260. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-024-00761-w