Voice, Agency, and Power in the Classroom

Many teachers enter the profession wanting to make a difference, they are idealistic, energised, and see so much potential in what they can offer their students. When they enter the classroom, the realities of being a teacher kick in, no matter the age, stage, or year level. From early childhood right through to postgraduate studies. However, increased focus on attainment figures, benchmarks, and accountability, may create tensions in what is prioritised at the classroom level. This often (but not always) comes at the expense of creativity, learning flexibility, and cultivating shared interests. Each new programme, initiative, or latest trend has to be squeezed into a schedule that is already bursting at the seams. Considerable existing research has documented increasingly excessive workloads for teachers (for example, the worldwide OECD TALIS 2018) as they try to fit everything in with as little compromise on their professional values and beliefs as possible. Teachers work within an overcrowded curriculum of things that ‘must be done’ that leaves less room for the things that students and teachers may really want to do. Teachers can sometimes find there is a disconnection between their own professional values and purpose and what they actually end up doing in their classrooms. This makes sense as there is a lot going on with power in the education system, school and classroom, but it does not mean it is the only way. In some respects, this disconnection reflects tensions between what is valued in education, what are considered to be the aims of education, and from whose perspective these aims and values are expressed. Agency and voice for students and teachers, as individuals and as a collective group, can provide a way to address this tension between aims and values, as it reconnects purpose and practice to empower the participants in education. It affords power to those actually in the classroom. Richard Lavoie is quoted as saying, ‘kids don’t want your power. They want their own’, and in this chapter we offer some ways to do this by discussing some of the theoretical and practical foundations for building a classroom community that places cultivation of individual and collective agency at the centre of practice. We approach the content in terms of exploring some of the foundational ideas and concepts that come into play when seeking to initiate or develop educational practices that place students at the centre of the classroom community. We unpack some of the ways power manifests in the classroom context, and suggest practical strategies for shifting the balance to enable collaborative partnerships between students and teachers. For those already engaging in agentic, empowering, and participatory practices, we offer points for reflection, critique and refinement of existing practices alongside useful frameworks, tools, and additional ideas and possibilities that could be considered and adapted to your context. While much of what is included in this chapter can (and does) apply to other aspects of the school environment, this chapter focuses on the classroom context, and specific practices, actions and examples that individual teachers can take with their classes. Provocation prompts are also provided to encourage schools and teacher teams to think about how these practices could be extended beyond individual classroom contexts and embedded within the culture of the school and school practices at all levels