Working in collaborative partnerships with students to bring forward and integrate student voice is a research ambition that has gained increased attention in recent years. Fielding (2004, p.306) writes that “the potential for transformation is more likely to reside in arrangements which require the active engagement of students and teachers working in partnership than in those which either exclude teachers or treat student voice as an instrument” and that working with “students as co-researchers cannot succeed without the engagement of students as … makers of meaning”. However, the institutionalized set ups that frame research partnerships between researchers, teachers and students are perpetuating existing inequalities (for example about who is identified as a competent participant, collaborator or co-researcher or who has something to say). So, even ambitious research is often challenged not to reproduce the social and cultural inequalities that can be found in schools described by Bourdieu and Passeron (1964). This presentation discusses the "Beyond Technology" project, a three-country study and describes a research partnership where primary school students (aged 15) produced a Manifesto on smartphones aimed at audiences including parents, teachers but also policy makers. The Children’s Smartphone Manifesto was inspired by a Manifesto on ICT prepared by Floridi (2015). I will draw on Floridi’s main conceptual points to compare it with the children’s position. This is also of significance since both pieces are aimed at addressing policy makers, albeit at different levels (European level vs local communal level). The presentation will explore the expectations and realities when students are given a voice to address adult communities. The presentation will point out that the risk in this type of partnership has to do with the uneven realities between students, teachers and researchers, even when there is a sympathetic culture that supports and sustains it.

‘Beyond technology in primary schools: the role of technology ownership in different subjects and the impact on pedagogy’, is a project conducted collaboratively between three primary schools and three Universities each from Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. The project’s aim is twofold: First, we aim to identify the practices, and appropriateness of use when primary school students use ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) technology at school. Such technology could include any kind of smart technology (phones, tablets), but also cameras, digital watches and any applications that such devices may be using to access information or collect data. Second, we are interested in how school-owned technology is used to connect with such devices including if they are used to collect information from students. Since the beginning, through meetings and letters of informed consent, students, teachers, and the students’ parents were invited to be involved and participate as actively as possible, including in the analysis of the collected data. The study was set up to be co-constructive, meaning that we worked with students and teachers on reviewing, refining and adding to the research questions and research design, asked students to reflect on and expand on their own transcribed discussions on selected topics and view and help to interpret video data from classroom observations to develop what Annemarie Mol (1999) describes as ‘construction stories’ that come together also because ‘we get stuck on some things’ and not others. Our data collection that informed the analysis of the findings in this presentation includes video recorded observations of class discussions, and student, teacher and researcher-produced writings in year three of the study. Asking the children to be collaborators and experts of their own lives meant that they were asked to (re)configure their world (Barad 2003) for others in consideration of those others.

Part of the research ambition was to create opportunities for children to act as co-researchers where they can shape research outcomes and findings. One of those was the production of ‘the Children’s Smartphone Manifesto’, a written reflection produced by the class of the then 15-year old Danish primary school students. The children were asked to consider how they experienced smartphones in their lives within and outside of school and to prepare a list of recommendations. The children had to manage a balancing act between the expectations brought forward by researchers (be open and tell me what you think) while being at school and considering their teachers (participate and complete your task) and parents (be happy and learn). Our analysis of the Children’s Manifesto documents the risky journey where children are asked to navigate as research collaborators. They enter into partnerships that can be defined as forms of ‘radical collegiality’ where they take responsibility for the teaching and learning that takes place at school (Fielding 2001). The children in this project demonstrate also very aptly how they have learned to adapt in the adults’ world. Their writings are of political nature since they echo the institutionalised framework within which they have learned to operate in realign in. In the presentation, I will show how they put researchers’, teachers’ and parents’ anticipations back in their place, to remind all involved that school is a very special environment where they have learned how to operate within, since it is shaped by rules, norms and expectations that are different to how they operate outside of school.

Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 28(3), 801-831. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1964).Les héritiers: les étudiants et la culture. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Fielding, M. (2004). Transformative approaches to student voice: Theoretical underpinnings, recalcitrant realities.British educational research journal,30(2), 295-311. Fielding, M. (2001). Students as radical agents of change.Journal of educational change,2(2), 123-141. Floridi, L. (2015). The Online Manifesto: Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era. Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London. Mol, A. (1999). Ontological politics. A word and some questions. The Sociological Review, 47(1_suppl), 74-89.