ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ethical and micro-political complexities of a research project which aimed to help students to express their identities through the use of photographs and scrapbooks in relation to the official policy and value discourses of a secondary school in England. Student voice/views are important because many students can articulate clearly what they think are effective and ineffective teaching and learning practices and relationships between teachers and students. Listening to student voices helps students and teachers to explore their relationships and the efficacy of different approaches to learning which can empower students as members of a school community. In this study, students were trained as participant-researchers using visual methods to show their relationships in and views of the school and were then given lesson time to take photographs around school and make scrapbooks from these. These became their property and the basis for individual interviews with the researchers about students’ views of their experiences of school. As well as gaining the support of their university’s ethical review board, the researchers negotiated collaborative research processes with teachers and students, but this raised questions about the flows of power, micro-politics and ethics in school-based studies.
