Finding a Student Voice in School Reform: student disaffection, pathologies of disruption and educational control

Abstract

This paper explores the nature and impact of state interventions into student behaviour in schools. Of particular concern is the maintenance of behaviourist analyses and practices within a changing rubric of impaired student pathology. The invention of Attention Deficit Disorder Syndrome is convenient to education departments struggling to maintain failing students who in previous times were jettisoned from schools into the unskilled labour market. In responding to changing student contexts, this paper reports on a project where students identified the educational needs of 13 to 15 year olds. Their findings speak to ways of confronting what John Furlong (1991) refers to as the ‘hidden injuries’ of schooling.