Pupil voice as a method in education research: thinking the ‘in-between’

This methodological paper is both an account of the method developed in a study exploring young people’s views of school Physical Education (PE) and a reflection on that process. The research involved 154 pupils aged 14-16-year-old in two English secondary schools. A focus group (6 pupils per school) drove the direction of the study, which incorporated a questionnaire survey of the whole year group in both schools (154 respondents) and 12 individual interviews. Of central concern to the paper is the tendency of pupil voice activities and research to result in compromise or tokenism. The study reported on here attempted to avoid this through a pragmatic approach which was initiated and completed by adults but gave as much power as possible over to young people. Drawing for the first time in this context on Rancière’s theory, it proposes an ‘in-between’ method as a means of doing voice research which acknowledges the multiplicity and complexity of young people’s voices and promotes credibility in place of notions of purity or authenticity.