ABSTRACT
This article is based on research into the voice and participation of students in a number of Spanish schools, carried out over more than 10 years. Our enquiry is consistent with a definition of participation as a right that is inherent in the condition of citizenship and that has to do with the capacity of people (students) to influence the real world in order to produce material or symbolic changes when making decisions about the common good. We have carried out research projects with a transformative purpose at all levels of compulsory education in different types of school. All the local projects have shared the same path or scheme that we have called the Inclusive Participation Cycle (deliberation-action-evaluation-dissemination). Following this, we have carefully studied each school project as a ‘prototype’ of democracy in motion or a real example of participation through deliberation.
