ABSTRACT
There is growing evidence that the voices of pupils in the processes of school improvement are beginning to be taken more seriously. When an editorial in the Times Educational Supplement (1997) refers approvingly to research on the views of 6-and 7-year-old pupils about their experience of schooling and ends by urging that ‘adults in general-and schools in particular-will have to take children’s views much more seriously than they do at present’ (p. 20) it is an indicator that attitudes are changing, however slowly. Such a standpoint, of course, has been gradually gaining ground in the secondary sector, particularly through the work of Jean Rudduck (Rudduck, Chaplain and Wallace, 1996) and John MacBeath (MacBeath, 1998a) in the UK, and Gary Goldman and Jay Newman (Goldman and Newman, 1998) in North America. However, with the exception of the work of John MacBeath et al. (MacBeath, Boyd, Rand and Bell, 1996) and the small-scale work of Suzanne SooHoo (SooHoo, 1993) and Patricia Campbell and her colleagues (Campbell, Edgar and Halsted, 1994) in middle schools in the USA, similar work with primary school pupils is virtually unknown.
