1. JOS KIENHUIS
Chapter 10
ENABLING PUPILS TO HAVE A VOICE
In truth, we are neither only what we inherit
nor only what we acquire
but, instead, stem from the dynamic relationship
between what we inherit and what we acquire
Paulo Freire
INTRODUCTION
In the first chapter of this book, Ponte wrote that the vision of interactive
professionalism and knowledge-construction has been taken as a pretext to develop
and critically examine Smith’s idea (2000) of the post graduate course as a
platform. Teachers (who are postgraduate students) and teacher educators on the
course and other stakeholders study their practice, and they are all learners on the
platform. Teachers study their daily school practice and, in accordance with the
principles of action research, they treat pupils as co-partners in their research. In
this way, the voice of the pupils comes to play an important part in developing the
school curriculum. Consequently, the pupils can also be said to be part of the
platform and to play a part in stipulating what happens on the platform and what
needs to be learned.
J. VAN SWET, P. PONTE, & B.H.J. SMIT (EDS.), POSTGRADUATE PROGRAMMES AS PLATFORM:
A RESEARCH-LED APPROACH, 00–00.
© 2007 SENSE PUBLISHERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

2. JOS KIENHUIS
In this chapter, the focus is on how solution-focused communication can help
teachers to enable pupils to have a voice and to co-construct the school curriculum.
A solution-focused approach validates pupils as ‘experts of their own lives’, having
specific and exclusive ideas about where they want to go and how they want to get
there.
I start with a short reconnaissance of the idea that the school curriculum is built
up through co-construction by teachers and pupils. This is followed by a section
examining ideas on enabling pupils to have a voice in connection with action
research, which is illustrated by my first case description. Next I look at the
background and principles of the solution-focused approach. The largest section of
this chapter presents an explanation of the main steps in solution-focused
communication, with the aid of the second case description. The final paragraph
discusses the question: What are the consequences of the construction of a
curriculum for a postgraduate programme for Fontys OSO.1
The examples and quotes from teachers and pupils are taken from an action
research project in a special school for secondary education, ‘Het Genseler’, a
special school for vocational education where a team of teachers with the support
of a researcher from Fontys University aimed to develop the curriculum in
collaboration with their pupils using solution-focused communication (Kienhuis &
Ponte, forthcoming).
CO-CONSTRUCTION OF THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM BY TEACHERS AND
PUPILS
Action research is a process through which teachers collaborate in evaluating their
practice. Teachers raise awareness of their personal theories and articulate a shared
conception of values. They try out new strategies to render the values expressed in
their practice more consistent with the educational values they espouse. Teachers
also record their work in a form which is readily available to, and understandable
by, other teachers. In this way they develop a shared theory of teaching by
researching practice. This content description borrowed from Elliott (1991) builds
upon the ideas of curriculum development from Stenhouse (1975), who reacted
against the dominant Research, Development & Diffusion model of curriculum
research and development. The RDD model takes the view that research and
development need to be a separate thing: academics do research, experts draw up
and spread the news and teachers apply the knowledge. One result of the many
ready-made curricula for teachers was that teachers often found they could not use
these ready-for-use curricula within their specific teaching environments.
Stenhouse (1975) introduced the Teacher as Researcher approach based on his
experiences in the Humanities Curriculum Project (1967-1972). This approach was
an aspect of Teacher-based Curriculum Reform. Important in this context is that
Stenhouse approached action research as a concept for teachers’ professional
development. His starting point was that there is no curriculum development
without professional development of teachers (see also Rudduck & Hopkins,
1985). Stenhouse’s conclusion, based upon his experiences with implementing
innovations in schools for secondary education, has been formulated as follows:
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3. ENABLING PUPILS TO HAVE A VOICE
A curriculum invites teachers to adopt a research stance towards their work,
suggesting rigorous reflection on practice as the base for further professional
development (…). Teachers have to become researchers examining their own
practice (as cited in Rudduck & Hopkins, 1985, p. 93).
This means that curricula should be seen as the output of a realised educational
programme that is achieved in interaction with pupils. From this viewpoint, we can
say that the learning of pupils is directly connected with the learning of teachers
(and vice versa). This can only be the case when teachers constantly listen to what
pupils bring up concerning their learning process. This is why teachers need to
reflect systematically on their practice by making observations and interpretations,
by discussing and making transformations and by improving their daily practice.
All this cannot be done without collaboration with pupils, colleagues and other
stakeholders’ (see Ponte, 2003).
Elaborating on this we can say that what pupils and teachers learn and co-
construct is the result of a negotiation process. However, research proves that
teachers often find it quite difficult to reflect systematically on their professional
teaching. Ponte for instance argued (2002) that teachers do find it difficult to
master action research and facilitators also experience problems trying to offer
teachers the right support at the right time. It seems to be especially difficult to
enable pupils to have a voice and to see them as partners who can participate in the
realisation of the school curriculum. Hadfield and Haw (2001) argued that the areas
in which young people are given ‘a voice’ are often limited by what professionals
see as appropriate; ‘ … in schools in general it is seen as appropriate for students to
have ‘a voice’ in writing school rules, but not in the appointment of new staff. The
power of their ‘voice’ is diluted as it is channelled into ‘safe’ spaces and managed
by more powerful ‘voices’’ (p. 497).
Teachers often question the abilities of pupils to express their ‘voice’ but Pedder
and McIntyre (2006) argue that a growing body of evidence suggests that from an
early age young people are capable of insightful and constructive analysis of their
experiences of learning in school. They state that research (McIntyre et al., 2005)
shows that ‘However good pupils’ ideas might be, it is teachers’ responsiveness to
them that is ultimately important’ (p. 145). In this chapter, I am arguing that
solution-focused communication will help teachers to increase their responsiveness
to pupils’ voices. Here I like to imagine teachers canoeing ‘gently down the stream’
with pupils, communicating with each other their collective goals as a desired
destination. I assume that teachers are experts in canoeing, able to start a canoe trip
with the help of pupils from any specific position or viewpoint. In section 3, you
will read about two strands of ‘enabling pupils to have a voice’: relationship-
building and empowerment.
PUPILS’ VOICE AND COMMUNICATION
Two broad strands can be distinguished in the literature on ‘enabling pupils to have
a voice’. The first strand focuses on the need for the children’s voice in order for
the teachers to learn. The main argument is that teachers should be capable of
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