Foregrounding the student experience

This chapter examines the student experience and how this can vary significantly across individuals. It explores disaffection with learning, including how it can originate and typically manifest, and highlights some of the factors that have contributed to its prevalence in many schools across England. It also looks at strategies for addressing disaffection and disengagement as it explores power dynamics and their effects on student autonomy, and the closing down of key spaces for unheard students, particularly where schools are situated within the socio-economic climate and thus coerced into adhering to a range of policy pressures. Vocal empowerment is thus proposed through the facilitation of a space for students to make contributions to the curriculum, to shape teaching and learning, and to challenge the marginalisation process some experience through the compulsory schooling environment.