Reimagining the role of children and young people's voices within the design of inclusive education

This chapter details an ongoing project that has been designed to involve children and young people in creating visual and tactile materials for a school resource toolkit which can be utilised to express how they feel about key issues within their education. The aim of developing the toolkit is so teachers and other education professionals can elicit and respond appropriately to the views and experiences of the children and young people they work with and support.

This chapter provides a case study describing the work of the ‘Visualising Opportunities: Inclusion for Children, Education, and Society’ (@VOICES_Ed) project. In this project, children and young people created ‘artified’, annotated photographs, scenarios, and other materials to facilitate the sharing of their views and experiences regarding inclusion and/or marginalisation. These materials have now been used as prompts for discussing issues relating to inclusive education with other children and young people, and with teachers, teaching assistants, and other professionals working with them.

In this chapter, we describe the range of multisensory strategies which have been developed and used and provide examples of the materials created by children and young people. We discuss what we have learnt from the project and offer suggestions on revisiting how children and young people can be central to developing more inclusive approaches, policies, and environments. In doing so, we offer alternative ways to facilitate listening to children and young people’s voices to enhance reflections on inclusion and marginalisation within education and society.