Micropolitical strategies in student-teacher partnerships: Students’ and teachers’ perspectives on student voice experiences

Abstract

Due to their transformative potential, student-teacher partnerships offer exceptional opportunities for student participation at school. However, partnering is also found to be troublesome as participants face considerable challenges associated with change processes in complex and hegemonic organizations such as schools. With this study, we aim to understand how students and teachers cope with these challenges by mapping the micropolitical strategies they adopt. Five teachers and 14 students from three cases were interviewed about their experiences with partnering. Three domains were identified in which respondents, based on various interests, adopt more or less constructive micropolitical strategies: (1) common goals that are relevant to both participants and the school, (2) responsibilities to achieve these goals, and (3) emotions. The paper concludes by raising implications for schools, for example, the need for a school-wide approach to clearly position and support future partnership initiatives, and for micropolitical literacy within the partnership to articulate and align unspoken expectations.