MICHAEL SCHRATZ and ULF BLOSSING

BIG CHANGE QUESTION

SHOULD PUPILS BE ABLE TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT
SCHOOL CHANGE?

MICHAEL SCHRATZ
1. Trapped in the School Discourse

My simple answer is ‘‘Yes,’’ followed by the inevitable ‘‘but’’ ... they

need the right ‘‘literacy’’ to do so. Whereas in everyday situations
young people take up responsibility for real life decisions (e.g. the use
of cellular phones with all the costs involved), in school they are still
seen as the pupils who have to learn about life. Whereas communi-
cative practices in the life world challenge their daily behaviour to
acquire literacy as social practice, teaching and learning practices in
the school world restrict them to literacy practices associated with
their roles in the classroom. Two main discourse patterns hinder
pupils’ participation in decision-making and their control over their
learning and learning environment.
On the one hand, it is the discourse of teaching and learning,
which builds on the power relationship between teachers and learners
in the teaching–learning interaction. According to the IRE pattern
(Initiation – Response – Evaluation; see Mehan & Schratz, 1993), the
teacher is ‘‘right’’ and the pupil has to follow suit. There is a clear
hierarchy in the institutional discourse of teaching and learning in
school. The introduction of standards in many education systems has
even increased the hierarchical power relationship between children
and teachers, although they are meant to be ‘‘customer’’ oriented.
On the other hand, it is the discourse on change drawing on the
rhetoric of organisational development, which is very much detached
from pupils’ lives in school. Even teachers show reluctance to take up
the jargon of organizational development for its managerial rhetoric
(change management, benchmarks, 360 degree evaluation ...), let
alone the pupils. As a consequence, mostly they do not have much
say in school development processes.

Journal of Educational Change (2005) 6: 381–393 Ó Springer 2005

DOI 10.1007/s10833-005-4088-0
382 MICHAEL SCHRATZ

Pupils are able to be more involved in the way the school is run, if
conventional discourse patterns of teaching, learning and organisa-
tional change are shaped in new communicative practices which
change the relationship of power. Conventional communication
patterns using language suffer from the fact that the power rela-
tionship is too much in favour of the adults when young people are
confronted with verbal argumentation. Therefore we have to find
other possibilities to deal with the ‘‘inner world’’ of schools from the
children’s perspective without falling into the traps set by language.
That is why we have to develop communicative strategies which are
more appropriate to their particular context.
When we use digital communication channels, which determine
everyday school life, we touch on the limitations of language. The
literacy concept behind it perpetuates the pupils’ deprivation of
decision-making in school change: the language of change is simply
not their language, and therefore their resistance is often expressed in
their silence or passivity. In our work we have experimented more
with analogic forms of communication, which give the pupils more
ownership over the process of decision-making. Analogic communi-
cation is more open to the individual biographical context, giving the
children space to make meaning in their own ways of communicating.
Here I present two examples of how communicative practices
embedded in relationships of power can be changed, showing that
pupils can be empowered to make decisions about school change by
analogical approaches.

2. Giving Pupils a Voice

Visuals are excellent means to increase children’s participation in

decision-making and control over their learning and learning envi-
ronment. This is why I provide pupils with a camera, helping them to
understand their school as a learning organisation. This visual device
helps them to find new ways of looking at school life from a different
perspective. The results are not only the evidence of what an indi-
vidual sees, not just documents but an evaluation of the world view.
The pictures taken give a visual insight into the ‘‘interconnectedness’’
between places, rooms, areas and feelings, emotions, and associa-
tions, which usually receive little attention in education – and even
less in schooling, where teaching is mainly based on cognitive aspects
of the curriculum. For Rob Walker (1993), the use of photographs
 BIG CHANGE QUESTION 383

opens up the potential, however elusive the achievement, to find ways

of thinking about social life that escape the traps set by language. For
him, looking at photographs creates a tension between the image and
the picture, between what one expects to observe and what one
actually sees. Therefore, images are not just adjuncts to print, but
carry heavy cultural traffic on their own account.
Taking pictures with the camera gives the pupils the freedom to
evaluate their learning and learning environments. The evidence they
get in the form of photographs opens up new possibilities. By giving
visual evidence – e.g. of how they experience learning – they become
socially literate in negotiating change with their teachers. The
following examples give some insight.

2.1. Example 1
The pupils in an English school presented the teachers pictures of
positive and negative learning experiences. The teachers could not but
accept the pupils’ evidences deeply rooted in their biographies. They
decided that each subject team would invite one student each as a
learning representative into their team who represents the demands of
the children’s learning.

2.2. Example 2
Children in grade 4 of an American primary school are given digital
cameras to take pictures of situations which enhance learning and
which hinder learning. The teachers were very worried when the
384 MICHAEL SCHRATZ

students strolled through the school and even left the main building
in order to find the motif of a situation they need for their photo-
graph. The teachers were concerned that the pupils were allowed to
move freely and to make their own decisions.

3. Dealing With Multiple Realities

Organisational change does not only deal with one ‘‘reality’’ in

schools, but with multiple realities. Photographing offers a chal-
lenging opportunity to bring to the fore the different layers of reality
of the pupils’ world in schools. To do so, the camera forms a special
lens which can be focused on the single elements of school life by
moving between the foreground and the background and thus
enabling ‘‘unimportant details’’ to become the main focus of interest.
Parts of the micro system of a school can be ‘‘deranged’’ by iso-
lating elements from the whole, because they can be viewed from a
different angle. Thus, in the picture taken by the pupils, the head’s
office is no longer the administrative centre of the school, but com-
mented on as ‘‘not an enjoyable place because behind that door there
are dangers lurking.’’ For them the staff room is not, as it is for the
teachers, the only retreat to their professional community, but ‘‘this is
the place where boring lessons come from.’’ As in everyday life, there
is no ‘‘real’’ reality and no comprehensive human consensus; there are
only islands of agreement in a sea of different opinions.
In the first place, taking pictures builds a bridge to the pupils’
everyday lives, especially of the young people’s feelings, because
usually they perceive that there is a deep abyss between their own
 BIG CHANGE QUESTION 385

priorities and adults’ ones. Therefore they experience an intensive

discrepancy between the parts of life they appreciate and those pro-
moted through ‘‘official’’ attitudes. On the other hand they perma-
nently experience how that very world is depreciated in the official
school curriculum, how it is forgotten or, at best, tolerated, assuming
that it does not interfere with the world of adult values!
In the official school curriculum questions look different from
those which children and young people ask in their everyday world of
schooling. They are the typical school questions, to which the correct
answer is already known and which form the basis for the universal
pattern of teaching. They serve the purpose of conveying functional
knowledge for surviving the (future?) challenges of life. However,
when the pupils move through the school building taking photo-
graphs, discussing and reflecting ‘‘in the jungle of feelings,’’ this fine
distinction between learning questions and life questions is partially
compensated. They are trying to find the unknown in the known and
to sense where relationships exist between their school world and
their world of feelings: it is their own appreciation that counts; what is
important is how they feel. In the course of the project they are asked
to articulate those feelings and make them accessible, which brings in
a further element but does not change things generally.
Freezing objects in the pictures, however, should not only be an
occasion for beginning to reflect and exchange experiences of differ-
ent feelings in order to be put to rest as frozen picture in the school
chronicle. More than that, the visual evidence, together with the
comments pupils have written on the photos, should be intended to
start the staff thinking about how some of the changes in the orga-
nisation of a school day or in the infrastructure of the building might
be possible (e.g. a second break to be spent outside). The photo
documents are harder ‘‘facts’’ than individual verbal expressions by
pupils which often do not even reach the ears of the person in charge.
In this form they become important pieces of testimony for living out
forgotten (or suppressed) reasoning.

4. Changing the Discourse

There is a strong argument about pupils’ inferior representation in

school council work. This might be true from a conventional view of
how regular school councils function according to an adult model.
Pupils have few strategies of their own; they work according to the
386 MICHAEL SCHRATZ

given criteria by chairing a meeting, or participating in discussions

and decision-making. In the council meeting they usually gain per-
mission from the teacher rather than negotiating within the council as
a whole.
In a study entitled ‘‘Empowering Children through Visual Com-
munication,’’ Sue Cox and Anna Robinson-Pant (2005) used specific
visual approaches derived from PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal)
to develop communicative strategies enabling pupils to participate
more successfully in formal decision-making processes. For them
there is more for pupils to learn as class representatives than chairing
a meeting and simply participating.
The children had limited ownership over the process of decision-
making, and the transfer of responsibility from teachers to pupils in
school council practices often intensified existing inequalities between
children and their peers. As a consequence, Cox and Robinson-Pant
started working with the pupils to develop alternative strategies,
which helped them to be able to shape arguments in their own way.
They therefore began to extend the range of communicative practices.
In conclusion, if pupil involvement in decisions about school
change is to be taken seriously, it cannot be achieved within existing
discourses of teaching, learning and organisational change. Rather,
we will need to engage much more seriously with pupils’ reality,
which means finding alternative communicating mechanisms that will
help shift the balance of power, and give young people the freedom to
‘‘articulate’’ their observations about their schooling experience.
Pupils conducting research into their workplace confront their
teachers with the ‘‘hard realities’’ of the context of their learning
experiences. These are no minor aspects of school life, as we have
heard them called by some people. A mere attitude of, ‘‘You can’t
change things anyway!’’ expresses an externally visible resignation
often mirrored in a negative attitude. If we do not take seriously
pupils’ requests in the area of the ‘‘hard’’ architecture, we will also fail
in those attempts which are related to the social architecture of the
school. The more pupils identify with their school, the more they also
assume responsibility for it.

References

Cox, S. & Robinson-Pant, A. (2005). Communicative practices and participation in

school councils in primary schools in the United Kingdom. In B.V. Street (ed),
 BIG CHANGE QUESTION 387

Literacies Across Educational Contexts – Mediating, Learning and Teaching.

London: Caslong.
Mehan, H. & Schratz, M. (1993). Gulliver travels into a math class: In search of
alternative discourse in teaching and learning. International Journal for Educa-
tional Research 19(5), 247–264.
Walker, R. (1993). Finding a silent voice for the researcher. Using photographs in
evaluation and research. In M. Schratz (ed), Qualitative Voices in Educational
Research. London: Falmer.

MICHAEL SCHRATZ
University of Innsbruck
Austria
E-mail: michael.schratz@uibk.ac.at

DOI 10.1007/s10833-005-4178-z

ULF BLOSSING

SHOULD PUPILS BE ABLE TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT

SCHOOL CHANGE?

Teachers and pupils are the two most important elements of a school’s
community. Each has their own traditional, allotted role. Teachers ‘‘do
the teaching’’ and pupils are ‘‘there to learn’’. Teachers tend to spend
their whole working life in a school while pupils spend a large and very
important part of their early life there; a time when their attitudes to the
future and to their roles and relationships in society will be shaped.
During this critical, formative period in their lives, pupils look care-
fully at the grown-ups, their teachers, to see what they tell them about
how to tackle life’s problems and those of relating to society and
becoming a part of it in a way they comprehend as meaningful.
From this perspective, schools’ key mission should be to instil in
pupils a belief in their future life. It should be about demonstrating
that it is worth talking to the grown-ups in school about problematic
situations and relationships. It should also be about proving that it is
worth trying to put improvement ideas forward and trying to make
them happen. In other words, this is an opportunity to engender
388 ULF BLOSSING

belief in the democratic process and send an important message to

youngsters that the democratic model functions, that it is worth
trying to make your opinion heard and engage with others in
changing your environment for the better.
But even if pupils are empowered to make real decisions about
school change, are they able to do so? Do they have the maturity,
experience and skills?
There can be little doubt that young people can deliver a detailed
review of problematic situations and relationships in school without
difficulty because they observe them and experience them first hand,
day after day. Youngsters in school also have an important advan-
tage compared to teachers, many of whom have spent a very long
time in school, because pupils are relieved of the burden of tradition.
Young people, therefore, can come up with more innovative and
unconventional solutions than teachers, solutions that may challenge
traditional structures and cultures and but which have the potential
to form the foundations for real long term change in schools.
Do we really believe that change at the local level, on the ground,
can be achieved without fully involving the people who make up the
majority of the school community? How can we expect change to
happen when this great part of the community, the pupils, can so easily
resist it if they decide it is not in their interests? In other words, pupils
are the main channel for providing a response and commentary on the
action teachers take to make school change and improvement happen.

5. Pupils’ Role in School Change

In the Albatross project in Sweden (Blossing, 1998), the organisa-

tional development of eight schools was mapped out. Teachers
reported that they rarely got any responses to their own teaching
work from school leaders or other adults. Instead, it was the pupils
who provided the most important response and thereby shaped the
outcome of improvement efforts. I found that teachers, when carrying
out improvement work, broke a kind of invisible contract with the
pupils that actually stopped improvement efforts.
The pupils expected their teachers to teach in a way corresponding
to the grading system. When teachers, encouraged by a positive
developmental climate in the school, broke this agreement by intro-
ducing new work methods that did not correspond to the way the
pupils were used to being assessed, the pupil–teacher relationship was
 BIG CHANGE QUESTION 389

exposed to some strain. The pupils were encouraged to participate in

the teaching experiment but, like their teachers, they needed time to get
used to the new methods. When crunch time came around, the pupils
discovered they were not being assessed according to the new work
method’s yardstick but continued to be judged according the old way
of working, by means of individual, written assignments. The pupils
did not like this, and showed their displeasure. Since the teachers were
dependent on a positive response from pupils for their own well-being,
they stopped their developmental efforts and returned to teaching ‘to
rule’; in other words, in accordance with the invisible contract which
said that they should keep to the work methods the pupils expected of
them and which were in agreement with the forms of assessment. The
relationship between teachers and pupils was restored.
The lesson learned is that involving pupils in the change process is
necessary to ensure implementation of an improvement effort and
turn it into a new working routine. Furthermore, pupil involvement
of this kind is basically about democratic processes, because the first
action needed is to organise a dialogue where different views of
interest can be expressed. By this means it is possible to foster
understanding of the change initiative. In the research literature this
first phase of the change process is called initiating or introduction
and is described as a kind of learning period where different activities
are organised to promote understanding of the improvement pro-
posals needed for a specific situation.
The question ‘‘should pupils make decisions about school change?’’
relates to the issue of pupil influence in general and to the basic demo-
cratic structure of schools. This specific question could give the
impression that the general questions about pupil influence or whether
the foundations of western schools are democratic for both teachers and
pupils have either been resolved or are grounded and integrated in
schools. The specific question could also imply a critical point in the
development of pupil influence and, so to speak, put the finger on a
fundamental mechanism. I will discuss and explore these assumptions by
offering a short review of recent Swedish school reform and its outcomes.

6. The Development of the Democratic Structure of Swedish

Schools

Dewey’s ideas, among others, influenced Swedish policy makers after

the Second World War and during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Par-
ticipation of pupils in creating their learning process became an
390 ULF BLOSSING

increasing focus within the national curriculum. In the curriculum of

1980, it was established that, working with their teachers, pupils
should create rules for school work and life in schools. It was also
established that pupils together with their teachers should decide for
how long and in what order they want to study different objectives as
well as how and what information material to use. Schools were
expected to make use of experiential working methods where pupils
were given responsibility for asking questions, finding ways to analyse
answers and draw conclusions. It was also expected that pupils would
get involved in a yearly evaluation of their own as well as teachers’
work. Besides the demands of democratisation of the methodology of
teaching, the government also wanted schools to establish formal class
councils where pupils could raise questions. Every school was expected
to set up a pupils’ council for the interests of all pupils in the school.
The national curriculum of 1980 was the result of a commission of
inquiry to find ways to improve the inner life of schools for pupils as
well as the participation and efficiency of teachers and school leaders.
In a study following 35 schools from 1980 to 2001, we have found that
while structures and processes fostering participation have undoubt-
edly improved significantly for teachers, in most of the schools they
have improved quite slowly for pupils (Blossing & Ekholm, 2005). In
1980, 23 schools had a solitary working organisation where the school
leader made most decisions by him- or her-self, and where teachers
planned their teaching without cooperating with colleagues. By 2001,
only five schools still had such a working organisation. Instead, they
utilised different forms of collective working practices based on
cooperation and dialogue. This is illustrated by the fact that during
the 20-year period the number of schools where teachers were involved
in goal discussions increased from 7 to 26, and the number where
teachers cooperated in writing a working plan on how to achieve the
curriculum goals increased from 0 to 29.
The picture for pupil involvement over the same period was,
however, different. Looking at the structure for encouraging pupil
participation and democracy, developing ways of working that
include making use of experiential learning giving pupils responsi-
bility for asking questions, finding ways to examine questions and
draw conclusions, the increase was from zero in 1980 to only 12
schools in 2001. And while 39 percent of the schools had class
councils in place in 1980, this decreased to 31 percent by 2001. So, in
spite of the national curriculum placing a heavy emphasis on pupil
influence, the study of the 35 schools shows a very modest level of this
 BIG CHANGE QUESTION 391

influence becoming embedded over time. With good reason one

might ask: do teachers and school leaders genuinely believe that
pupils should have influence? Is it a question of teacher attitude or are
there other mechanisms or ways to understand why the growth in
pupil influence is so slow in coming?
One obvious reason is that the directions and regulations regarding
class councils have been softened. Class councils were mandatory in
the 1980 curriculum, and the government distributed economic
resources for implementation, some of which was to be used to
organise and set up class councils. Since the 1994 curriculum, direc-
tions have become more vague, and schools are free to find their own
ways for ensuring pupil influence. In this situation, schools tend to
argue that the best forms are those that focus on changing the ways of
working as opposed to formal democratic dialogue through class
councils. Class councils are seen to be meaningless, say some teachers,
because pupils do not get involved and put questions on the agenda,
and therefore they argue it is better to change working ways into a
structure where pupils have increased responsibility of their work,
demonstrating more real pupil influence. The problem is that these
new ways of organising pupils’ self-managed work (e.g. by letting
pupils choose what assignment to do when and where during so called
‘‘free’’ working periods) are criticised for not setting pupils’ learning
free but instead for disciplining it even more strictly according to what
teachers have already decided they should do.

7. Understanding the Never Ending Debate of Pupil Influence

as a Matter of Power Distribution

Other, and much more important, mechanisms question whether the

traditional teacher role can in fact be maintained if pupils are given
influence. I believe we cannot ask that question without addressing
the question about power distribution in schools and without asking
whether teachers should be seen as lead members in a learning
community rather than teachers or ‘didacts’ delivering expert
knowledge to pupils; and changing teachers’ role, from the ‘expert/
client role’ to leaders in a community of young learners. Real pupil
influence that is going to affect learning and improvement efforts in
schools presupposes that teachers must give up some of their power
to decide what questions make up the agenda and instead become
learners themselves working to understand what is in pupils’ minds,
392 ULF BLOSSING

what their views and attitudes are to the learning situation. This
means that teachers must come down from their expert thrones and
empower young people to ask their own questions in school, scruti-
nising their school situation to detect deficiencies in learning condi-
tions, inventing ways to make it better and being involved in
improvement work to make it happen. Changing the teachers’ role is
long term work. There is no apparent current consensus among the
profession regarding the nature of improvement efforts. Knowledge
about improvement efforts is quite low and teacher groups do not
tend to think that it is part of a teacher’s duty anyway.
In Sweden, there have been strong efforts to change the teacher’s
role over the more than 20 years we were studying the 35 schools. This
change is strongly linked to issues of school improvement. Teachers’
unions promoted a range of school development initiatives during the
last decade of the 20th century. In agreements between teachers’ unions
and the union of the Swedish local authorities, structures were put in
place to secure schools’ progress. One example is that teachers, since
the first years of the 1990s, have used six percent of their yearly working
time for the development of their skills and competencies. This is about
13 days a year that teachers use for planning with others and for in-
service training of different kinds. This structure was present in all the
35 schools studied. Another outcome of the agreements reached during
the 1990s was that many districts renovated their schools so that they
contain working areas for teachers. In these areas, each teacher has his
or her own working space including a computer. This move has helped
teachers stay in the school when planning and when following up work
with students. In some schools, space has also been given for meeting
rooms, which has helped develop cooperative processes.
In schools where we found that collective planning among teachers
has become normalised, changes have occurred during the1980s and
1990s. The basis for institutionalisation of new working patterns
among teachers has been a mixture of material changes and changes
in norms among teachers. Earlier attitudes stating that every teacher
was doing as well as he or she could and therefore it was reasonable
for them to work in isolation, have slowly been replaced by attitudes
saying that no one, not even a teacher, is perfect. Therefore they may
need to get feedback from others and may also need to receive help to
do better. These norm changes have been significant in stimulating
the development of more collective forms of work.
The long term study of the 35 schools shows that you can
restructure schools and change the teachers’ role so they become
 BIG CHANGE QUESTION 393

better in carrying out improvement, but they can still cling on to a

balance of power promoting an expert role in relation to pupils that
neither fosters pupil influence in relation to working practices nor
democratic councils. The study shows that schools that succeed in
implementing class councils also strongly focus on the specific issue of
pupil influence in their schools’ improvement efforts, find clear
structures to make it happen and carefully follow up implementation
to foster institutionalisation of changes.
To conclude: pupils should be able to make decisions about school
change because that is the way to let pupils see that the democratic
model is working. Decisions about school change and pupil influence
matter because it is about redistributing power between the two
largest groups in school, teachers and pupils. Pupils need to make
decisions about school change. Their voice needs to be heard because
they possess vast resources of observation and knowledge about
school life from which they can monitor and review. What is more,
they are young and unspoiled, not burdened with tradition, and are
therefore well placed to put innovative improvement proposals for-
ward. The democratic structure of schools, however, still must be
addressed. The specific question of letting pupils make decisions
about school change brings into sharp focus how important it is.

REFERENCES

Blossing, U. (1998). Skolan som en lokal organisation – en förstudie av 8 skolor i

Albatrossprojektet. Om hur kvalitetssäkring, beslutsfattande, normer, grupperingar
och arbetssätt inverkar på skolornas utvecklingsarbete (School as a local organisation
– a pilot study of 8 schools in the Albatross project. About how quality assurance,
decision-making, norms, groupings and working ways affect the developmental work
in schools.) (Arbetslivsrapport No. 1998:27). Solna: Arbetslivsinstitutet.
Blossing, U. & Ekholm, M. (2005). A central school reform programme in Sweden and
the local response: Taking the long term view works. A twenty year longitudinal
study of 35 Swedish ‘‘grund’’ schools. Paper presented at the International Congress
for School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Barcelona, Spain.

ULF BLOSSING
Department of Educational Sciences
Karlstad University
Sweden
E-mail: ulf.l.blossing@kau.se