"Entangled Voices": A Multicase PhotoVoice Study of the Interrelationship Between Student Voice and Teacher Voice

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Making Good Trouble: Thinking With Abolition, Cultural Capital, Transgender Studies, and Student Agency

Abstract

Although the concept of student voice gained popularity in recent years, it has not been as successful as hoped for and students still feels voiceless. A significant reason for student voice initiatives’ lack of success is teachers' reticence and even opposition to participate in a process that calls for shifts in power relations between them and their students. Such shifts may contradict their perceptions of their professional identity, lose control over the students, and fail to achieve their professional goals. It might even cause them to lose their own voices. Findings from two photovoice-based projects we conducted suggest that students voice and teachers voice are entangled, and only by mutual collaboration both of them voices can be realized.

Authors

• Avy Dwight Hemy, Levinsky College of Education

• Assaf Meshulam, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev