Student participation in school decision-making and reform processes has taken inspiration from reconceptualisations of childhood. Advocates for student voice argue for the repositioning of children and young people in relation to adults in schools. This article works with data from a multi-sited case study of three primary schools and students’, teachers’ and school leaders’ accounts of their student voice practices. We consider the relationships between students in student voice activities in primary schools, and the possibilities and ambivalences of representative students ‘speaking for’ other students. We integrate recent insights from moves beyond voice in childhood studies, and from the turn to listening in cultural studies, and raise questions for students, teachers and researchers who seek to encourage student voice in primary schooling.

The public policy of numerous nations, including Australia, articulates a clear expectation that schools will develop young people's capacities to participate in civic society and its democratic structures and processes. A romantic policy rhetoric hides a reality that is both more complex and less well understood than is typically acknowledged. Young people's democratic participation is subject to varying interpretations and implementation, and is employed to serve varying agendas. The role of schools in developing this participation is particularly subject to tensions and contradictions that can work to undermine and constrain the participation of marginalised young people. There is an abundance of research and policy literature on this topic. Yet, within this plethora of prescription and commentary, the key threads that might make a difference are not always clear. Moreover, there is little in this supposedly inclusive agenda that considers its implications for marginalised groups. This article provides a meta-analysis of the current policy and research landscape, examining the dominant discourses and their implications for young people's participation. It focuses particular attention on the position of marginalised young people as it emerges from the literature and outlines an alternative agenda with the potential to challenge an overly complacent policy and practice context.

Student voice has the potential to prompt creative and transformative teacher professional learning and practice. However, contemporary conditions of education – including policy priorities and institutional constraints – shape how student voice is taken up. This article draws on data from an evaluation study of a student voice programme (‘Teach the Teacher’) as enacted in two Australian schools. Notwithstanding the possibilities of student voice, reductive interpretations of teacher’s work risk translating student voice into thin practices; the teacher becomes envisioned as technician who needs to fill their ‘toolbox’ and find ‘what works’ by listening to students. Analysing what is said and unsaid about student voice for teacher professional learning in interviews with school leaders and teachers, as well as focus groups with students, this article explores the problematics of mobilising student voice for teacher professional learning. Questions are raised for those seeking to promote reciprocal intergenerational learning in democratic schools.

Contemporary global flows of people, ideas and capital have led to profound changes in transnational interactions, affinities, forms of sociality and understandings of citizenship. Traditional vocabularies of citizenship struggle to cope with this rescaling of dimensions of citizenship in an increasingly globalised world. In addition, educational policies and practices remain primarily focused on normative, national conceptions of citizens, thus overlooking the multiple, diverse and plural conceptualisations of diverse young citizens in classrooms today. Arguing for a fresh approach that applies ‘cosmopolitan sociologies’ of education, in this paper, we propose a framework for understanding citizenship that centres on spatial, relational and affective dimensions of citizenship. We review recent research with young people highlighting the multiple ways in which young people are constituted as citizens through a range of social, affective and spatial affinities. The paper concludes by examining the implications of this framework for educational policies and practices.