Articulating student voice and facilitating curriculum agency

Since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the UK in 1994 much has been made in education policy of consulting with young people about their educational experiences. This article takes Arnot and Reay's notion of pedagogic voices to provide a critical framework to examine the different voices produced within a curriculum development project entitled 'Young Peoples' Geographies' (YPG). It discusses the extent to which this initiative has enabled school students to bring their own voices, and their common-sense knowledge, to one aspect of school, namely the curriculum. I argue that particular and more inclusive pedagogic practices, coupled with developments in the academic discipline, can go some way towards enabling greater degrees of student agency in school life, while at the same time acknowledging that institutional, social and cultural constraints place limitations on both students and teachers.