Abstract
‘Pupil voice’ is a movement within state education in England that is associated with democracy, change, participation and the raising of educational standards. While receiving much attention from educators and policy makers, less attention has been paid to the theory behind the concept of pupil voice. An obvious point of theoretical departure is the work of Jürgen Habermas, who over a number of decades has endeavoured to develop a theory of democracy that places strong significance on language, communication and discourse. This paper is an attempt to gauge the usefulness of Habermas’ approach to understanding the theory of pupil voice, in particular how his theory of universal pragmatics lends itself to a ‘philosophy of between’, a philosophy that finds echoes in the conflicted nature of schooling that ‘pupil voice’ is supposed to rectify to some extent. The paper also explores the drawbacks of a Habermasian approach, in particular his overreliance on rationality as a way of understanding communication. Lacan’s concept of the objet petit a is introduced as an alternative way of understanding pupil voice.
References
Best, S. (1995). The politics of historical vision: Marx, Foucault, Habermas. NY: Guilford Press.
Blaug, R. (1999). Democracy, real and ideal: Discourse ethics and radical politics. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Braaten, J. (1991). Habermas’s critical theory of society. Albany: SUNY Press.
Calhoun, C. (1995). Critical social theory: Culture, history and the challenge of difference. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Cox, S., & Robinson-Pant, A. (2006). Enhancing participation in primary school and class councils through visual communication. Cambridge Journal of Education, 36(4), 515–532.
Cremin, H., Mason, C., & Busher, H. (2011). Problematising pupil voice using visual methods: Findings from a study of engaged and disaffected pupils in an urban secondary school. British Educational Research Journal, 37(4), 585–603.
Descartes, R. (1637). Discourse on method, optics, geometry, and meteorology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Descartes, R. (1644/1984). Principles of philosophy. New York: Springer.
Deuchar, R. (2009). Seen and heard, and then not heard: Scottish pupils’ experience of democratic educational practice during the transition from primary to secondary school. Oxford Review of Education, 35(1), 23–40.
Habermas, J. (1962). Structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society (T. Burger & F. Lawrence, Trans., 1989). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Habermas, J. (1979). Communication and the evolution of society. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kirshner, L. A. (2005). Rethinking desire: The Objet Petit A in Lacanian theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 53(1), 83–102.
Lacan, J. (1986). The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis. Middlesex: Penguin.
Lundy, L. (2007). ‘Voice’ is not enough: Conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. British Educational Research Journal, 33(6), 927–942.
Murphy, M., & Fleming, T. (2010). Communication, deliberation, reason: An introduction to Habermas. In M. Murphy & T. Fleming (Eds.), Habermas, critical theory and education. New York: Routledge, pp. 3–16.
Payne, M. (2007). Foreign language planning: Pupil choice and pupil voice. Cambridge Journal of Education, 37(1), 89–109.
Peacock, A. (2001). Listening to children. Forum for promoting 3–19 comprehensive education, 43(1), 19–23.
Rudduck, J. (2003). Consulting pupils about teaching and learning: Process, impacts and outcomes. Available on the Regard research database, http://www.regard.ac.uk/regard/home/index_html.
Sciulli, D. (1992). Habermas, critical theory and the relativistic predicament. Symbolic Interaction, 15(3), 299–313.
Sellman, E. (2009). Peer mediation services for conflict resolution in schools: What transformations in activity characterise successful implementation? British Educational Research Journal, iFirst Article, 1–16.
Steele, M. (1992). The ontological turn and its ethical consequences: Habemas and the post-structuralists. Praxis International, 11(4), 428–447.
Taylor, C., & Robinson, C. (2009). Student voice: Theorising power and participation. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 17(2), 161–175.
Thompson, P. (2009). Consulting secondary school pupils about their learning. Oxford Review of Education, 35(6), 671–687.
Thomson, P., & Gunter, H. (2006). From ‘consulting pupils’ to ‘pupils as researchers’: A situated case narrative. British Educational Research Journal, 32(6), 839–856.
Whitehead, J., & Clough, N. (2004). Pupils, the forgotten partners in education action zones. Journal of Education Policy, 19(2), 215–227.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Moran, P., Murphy, M. Habermas, Pupil Voice, Rationalism, and Their Meeting with Lacan’s Objet Petit A. Stud Philos Educ 31, 171–181 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-011-9271-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-011-9271-6