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Management in Education Copyright © 2007 British Educational Leadership,
Management & Administration Society (BELMAS), Vol. 21(1): 23–28.
DOI: 10.1177/0892020607073399
www.sagepublications.com
But, where are
the children?
Helen Gunter and Pat Thomson
Paper presented to the BELMAS Conference,
Birmingham, September 2006.
Introduction
W
ithin the emergent field of school
leadership children are a virtual
absence. They are absent because
policy and practice is constructed and concep-
tualised around the interests of elite adults, and
they are virtually absent because their presence
is that of objects that elite adults are meant to
give reference to and impact upon. The testing
and performance regime is alienating children,
with 55,000 truanting a day, and as Angus
(2006) argues: ‘… students are unlikely to make
the active choice to try to succeed in school if
the school seems like a foreign country in which
they are outsiders’ (376). If concessions are
made then this is usually by children being
asked to respond to and hence legitimise adult
practice and plans. In this paper we report on
our membership of a research group where chil-
dren are changing role from consultants to
researchers, and we examine the consequences
of this for knowledge claims.
Beginning with children
We began an evaluation of a secondary school
in 2004 with a small group of students (n = 8,
Years 7–11). We met with them to talk about
their views of teaching and learning, their expe-
riences of the school and their plans for the
future. From this we constructed a question-
naire that the students then piloted, and once it
was agreed all students in school provided their
views. Two years later we are about to complete
the project that the data from this questionnaire
generated. In October 2006 the students will
make a presentation to senior staff on their proj-
ect, and in so doing they will show how they
have moved from being consultants in respond-
ing to an adult-determined agenda, to planners
and completers of a student-agreed agenda.
We have provided an overview of the full
evaluation and the way it fits into how the
school, as a successful school, is rethinking the
purposes and practices of school improvement
(see Hollins et al., 2006), and we have explored
student voice (Thomson and Gunter, 2006)
and the detail of the student project (Gunter
and Thomson, 2006; Thomson and Gunter,
2007). The students examined the questionnaire
data and from this identified three possible proj-
ects; the one they chose to explore is based on
an interest in bullying. Our evaluation showed
that the stakeholders and the wider community
feel it is a good school, but the data showed
some unease among the student population
(particularly boys at KS3) about feeling safe.
This chimed with the student research group
and the project that we designed together has
gone through a number of stages. In presenting
it we are conscious of telescoping a long period
of work and potentially smoothing out the nec-
essary messiness of working together. There are
three main thrusts: first, to test out the question-
naire data by some qualitative work with a
sample of students; second, to test out the find-
ings from the students with staff in regard to
how bullying is understood and normally han-
dled; and, third, to report back on these findings
and to work with a team of staff and students in
redeveloping school policy.
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Photo 1. A group of students
The group decided to use focus groups with
students to gain their perceptions of school life,
and they did this by staging dramatic scenarios
about possible, but ambiguous, scenes of stu-
dents in school. In addition they photographed
types of clothes, shoes and bags that signified
allegiance to a particular group (e.g. scallies,
moshers). We present two examples of these
trigger photographs: one shows a playground
incident: has a child collapsed through illness
or have they been knocked to the ground? A
second shows a classroom scene: is the pencil
case being handed over or grabbed?
With the support the school staff and admin-
istration, 14 groups of randomly selected
students across all years were interviewed. Each
group consisted of four to five students. One
member of the research team led the question-
ing, while another took notes. Neither of us was
present on the day. The students analysed the
data and the key findings were as follows:
 The students had a very broad definition of
what counted as bullying: segregation that
occurred around clothing and shoes; sexist
24 MiE, Vol 21 issue 1
and racist name calling; and isolation, rejec-
tion and exclusion from peer groups inside
and outside the classroom.
 There are some gender behaviour differ-
ences, with boys more likely to ‘become
physical’ while girls remained verbal (‘bitch-
ing’). Bullying was more common in the
junior years and it had almost petered out by
the time students reached sixth form. The
data suggests that social and cultural minori-
ties in the school are more likely to be
subject to the persistent name calling, isola-
tion and minor physical scuffling they
regarded as bullying behaviour.
 There was evidence of sexual harassment –
terms such as slut, ho, prostitute and slag
were commonly produced in response to
particular items of clothing. No mention was
made of lesbian or gay sexual orientation as
a cause of bullying.
 There were almost no instances of ‘very seri-
ous bullying’, that is the systematic physical
and verbal abuse and acute persecution of a
student by another or a group. However, the
research team were told that low-level bully-
C01_QXD 2/1/07 14:53 Page 25
Photo 2. Students in the classroom
ing – name-calling, isolation and minor
physical shoving and pushing – was an
everyday occurrence. It happened in and out
of class. Furthermore, students reported that
most teachers did not recognise this activity,
were not prepared to intervene if asked and
were incapable of doing anything effective
even if they did take action. What is more,
students were also able to change their tac-
tics if challenged by a teacher to make it
appear as if they had stopped, whereas in
reality, they adopted another approach. The
focus groups reported that they felt safe with
their friends, but only half said that teachers
made them feel safe.
The students produced a PowerPoint report
which they then presented to the whole staff.
Staff volunteered to be respondents in the next
stage of the research, and at the beginning of
2006 the students began to plan this work.
They decided to use dramatic scenarios in
written form, and after piloting, they inter-
viewed 13 staff asking how they would engage
with these dramas. By focusing on what could
be rhetorically taken as hypothetical situations,
respondents were able to distance themselves
from the incidents involved, to speak about
their beliefs and experiences and only intro-
duce their own direct experiences when they
felt comfortable doing so. Two of these scenar-
ios are presented in Figure 1.
The rationale for Scenario B was based on
finding out: (a) if bullying was understood as
an ‘in-school’ issue; and (b) how and why
adults find out what may be happening, inter-
vene in a situation and support the student.
The data shows that staff recognised this as
difficult because of the boundary between ‘in’
and ‘out’ of school. On balance most staff said
that there was a need to act by approaching the
student and trying to find out what was hap-
pening. There were different levels of response
from involving student services in school
through to contacting the police.
The aim of Scenario D was to see how and
why students might be labelled ‘good’ or ‘trou-
ble-maker’ and the effect on teachers’ handling
of incidents. Staff talked about how the situation
should not be allowed to escalate through over-
reacting. It should be dealt with calmly through
discussion, and if necessary to involve student
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Figure 1. Selection of scenarios

Scenario B
A pupil in Year 10 is being verbally abused, often pushed around and in some cases they’re pushed violently
into windows and walls. However, this not only occurs within school grounds but also on their way home, the
pupil is forced to change their way of walking every week to ensure they are safe. You suspect that some-
thing is wrong and have seen the pupil being pushed into walls. Nevertheless the student has yet to go to you
or a member of staff for help, as they are scared of events that are unstoppable when not on school grounds.
Question: What actions would/could you take?
Scenario D
Here are two incidents:
 A student who is deemed intelligent and usually displays good behaviour is found to be making derogatory
comments to a less able pupil, who is considered to be disruptive. The comments made are with regard to
the less able student’s academic ability.
 A student who is regarded as a persistent trouble-maker, but who does not normally make comments
regarding others, is making offensive comments to a more able student.

Question: What do teachers usually do in each of these circumstances?

Prompt: If there is a difference, why is this the case?

services. However, there was some recognition
that the students might be dealt with differently,
e.g. the more able student should know better;
the able student would be more favoured and
would be talked to with the trouble-maker being
given a detention. Two respondents saw the
second incident as more serious.
It became obvious that things that students
experienced may not be the same for the
teacher. For example, a teacher ignoring inci-
dents of name calling during class appeared to
the teachers as a decision about behaviour man-
agement. The teacher is trying not to escalate a
situation that could then disrupt the whole class
and try instead to steer the students involved
back to the learning task. The student focus
group data shows that they interpret this as not
doing anything about the situation. The exis-
tence of multiple perspectives and differences in
views is something that the students now need
to consider at length when thinking about
recommendations arising from their findings.
Over all the findings from the project show
the following:
 The dominant discourse about bullying as
being about an identified perpetrator and
victim has been challenged. Students focus
instead on safety as social practice, and this
presents a challenge to the notion that
organisational culture can be fully and
directly managed by formal school leaders.
 Identities are shaped in and through student
groupings, teachers’ feedback and peer sub-
cultures. This data allows a glimpse at how
these identities are classed (scallies) and
gendered (slags and the absence of any con-
versation about homosexuality)
 Professional practice (rules, codes, judge-
ment) can be read as both simple and
complex. What adults regard as appropriate
intervention can be interpreted by students
as not taking the issue seriously.
 Student voice strategies may miss the reali-
ties of school life. What the students are
describing is under the radar of standard
audit and self-evaluation materials adminis-
tered by adults.
 Both adults and students will have to be
involved in devising interventions and
changes.
The students have now produced a
PowerPoint report and they will present this to
the school development team in October 2006,
and a new policy will be produced by a
staff–student group.
Children as researchers
There are examples of students being asked to
tell adults what they think about improvement
(e.g. Flutter and Rudduck, 2004; Rudduck et
al., 1996; Rudduck and Flutter, 2004;
Rudduck, 2006) and/or involvement in school
evaluation (e.g. MacBeath, 2000; MacBeath
and Sugimine, 2002). Official reform strategies
either edit children out or limit their role. For
example, in teachers: meeting the challenge of
change (DfEE, 1998: 12) children are ‘pupils’
who are the objects upon which ‘a world-class
education service’ will impact. More recently,
the National College for School Leadership

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has tried to persuade headteachers into Leading
a Research-engaged School (NCSL, 2006) in
order to challenge the ‘image problem’ where
‘people tend to picture educational researchers
as “ivory tower” boffins who are far removed
from the practicalities of life in the classroom’
(10). The advocated approach is consultation,
with one example of children joining an adult
team to do fieldwork. It seems, as Rudduck
(2006) has shown, that the status of voice has
increased, but the danger remains that ‘we may
have “mile-wide” promotion with only “inch
thick” understanding’ (133).
Smyth (2006) has edited a special edition of
the International Journal of Leadership in
Education where contributors respond to his
arguments that ‘we need spaces of leadership
from which young people can speak back
regarding what they consider to be important
and valuable about their learning’ (282). There
are examples of students who go beyond con-
sultation and can participate in research in
ways that are productive, and can devise and
implement a change strategy (Fielding, 2001;
Thomson and Holdsworth, 2003). Here some
of the pitfalls and pleasures that arise are
opened up, and claims are made regarding
motivation and skill development, as well as
improvements in relationships (Bragg and
Fielding, 2005). Such work emphasises the
realities as distinct from the romantic notions
that can dominate when fads and fashions
invade through normative accounts of good
practice. We are thinking here of distributed
leadership which is more often than not advo-
cated rather than discursively and empirically
examined within context.
The challenge of students as researchers
means we need to be candid about the following:
 Research tends to be leader centric where
the school hierarchy is accepted as normal
and through the experience of schooling it is
normalised. As long as students (and many
adults) are automatically followers, with lim-
ited chances for authentic participation, then
they will remain as receivers rather than
shapers of the vision.
 Positivist epistemology dominates with an
emphasis on students (and many adults) as
objects to be identified and measured. As
long as this approach is privileged then stu-
dents will remain sources of data for an
externally determined performance regime.
Pluralistic knowledge claims exist with the
potential of description, activism and experi-
ence for developing knowledge about
leadership as a distributed social practice
(Gunter, 2005).
 Agenda setting is controlled by the govern-
ment and preferred providers, with an
urgency to set targets and deliver. Children
learn to accumulate grades and certificates,
and in Angus’ (2006) terms they may be
winners but ‘they risk disengagement from
any joy of learning’ (377). Counter-narra-
tives of headteachers who work collegially
with staff to both prevent harm and develop
alternative approaches are often invisible. As
long as researchers collaborate with rather
than set the agenda then pedagogic practices
may remain unrecognised.
 The quasi-market, together with the lan-
guage and practice of customers, products
and quality, is usually accepted. Networks of
private–public sector consultancies have
been privileged and so capital accumulation
has become a central goal. As long as chil-
dren are positioned as traders rather than as
citizens then their voice as learners may be
silenced and at best be hoarse.
 Practitioner credentials, where knowledge
and knowing about organisational matters is
regarded as distinctively relevant, is used to
provide legitimacy in professional training.
As long as teaching and learning is what a
highly trained organisationally efficient
cadre of leaders impact upon, then students
will find it difficult to stake a claim as legiti-
mate players in the game.
The challenge is to put the realities of schools
as public places as the prime focus of attention.
However, this is difficult because ‘there are
some deeply entrenched interests that have a
vice-like grip on continuing to control and pro-
gressively dismantle public education as we
know it’ (Smyth, 2006: 282). The irony is not
lost that it will take, as Smyth goes on to argue,
‘courageous leadership’ (282), and probably
from a headteacher. Indeed, we acknowledge
that the voices of adults who are teachers need
to be heard, particularly after years of being
accused of sedition and experiencing the seda-
tion of performance regimes (Gunter, 2003).
The children and the adults we have been
working with are interested in developing what
Fielding calls ‘dialogic schools’ (308), and the
agenda for this development needs to embrace:
(a) a relational model of leadership where prac-
tice is communal and mutual; (b) a rights and
public realm based agenda where we bear wit-
ness to social injustice and are active in working
for social justice; and (c) a research programme
based on empirical research and theorising,
work that is pedagogic and hence risky.
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