Applying Post Concepts: Theorizing Voice and Power with Foucault, Butler, and Deleuze and Guattari

Abstract

Over the last decade, we have seen an emerging corpus of literature on student voice at classroom, school, university, and system level that draw from poststructural theories. More than just a capacity of students to talk about schooling practices as informants, student voice involves student participation and agency in regard to both pedagogical decision-making and school governance. It is produced through relations of power within the particular situated contexts of schools. Student voice work has been used in teacher education as a tool to gauge efficiencies (schooling improvement) and address power asymmetries (student participation and activism) (Mayes et al. 2017). It is appropriate to question the motivation for and justification of participatory voice projects as a part of schooling reform. To what degree do students exercise agency and influence matters that affect their own lives and the well-being of others?