ABSTRACT:  

Many studies examine the ‘student voice’ (Atkinson et al 2019; Candace 2007; Fielding 2010) but sparse attention is afforded to the everyday experiences of secondary school pupils.  Adolescence is a period of transition: both developmentally and educationally, as teenagers move from primary to secondary schools.   Theorists from earlier decades viewed this period as one of turbulence (Bandura, 1964; Erikson 1968; Hall 1904; Winnicott 1965).  Whilst the ‘moody’ teenager may be a stereotype, easily dismissed, the evidence shows that depression can be common in this age-group (Boyd and Bee 2012).   Yet the current target-focussed and performative education agenda in countries across the globe, positions teenagers as adults-in-the-making, rather than unique individuals. Globally, some children and young people are invisible – affecting their health, education, and wealth (Nyanyuki 2020).  By disregarding the needs of children and young people they become vulnerable and unprotected. In the UK context, statistics show that 7% of young British teenagers have attempted suicide (Layard and Clark 2014) and a high percentage of males, aged 16-17 years old, have reported feeling sad or hopeless (Smyth 2013).  The needs of individual learners seem over-shadowed by the needs of the institutions they attend.  The right of all children to have a voice (UN 1989), regarding actions that impact on them, is given scant acknowledgement by some policy-makers.

Yet children were once at the heart of the UK education agenda (DfES 2003). As long ago as the 1960s it was suggested that ‘as school populations have grown…we have tended to decrease our attention to the individual child’ (Doll and Fleming 1966:106).   There has been a move away from a child-centred approach (Doddington and Hilton 2007) to young people seen as a homogenous group, centre-staging the accumulation of knowledge and the call for achievement, without consideration of individual needs (Fielding and Moss 2011).   However, a child-centred ethos is re-emerging (MacFarlane 2016) with a new slant on facilitating ‘freedom to learn’ (Rogers 1969,1983) to young people.  Rogerian theory, with children at the heart of education, counters current education policies and practices, and continues to offer a ‘view of what education might become’ (ibid).  Seen through a child-centred lens, education in our current climate is perceived as ‘prescriptive’ with teachers expected to ‘deliver’ and ‘implement’ certain skills and knowledge (Doddington and Hilton 2007: xiii), which is at odds with the values of child-centred education.  Concepts of freedom and agency underpin the child-centred approach to education (Rogers 1961) within a positive view of humanity (Merry 2006).

Against this background, my research is guided by the following questions:

• How do young people talk about being in school?  What are the adult’s views of young people in school?
• What is it like to be an adolescent/teenager?  In the home, school, community?
• What are the challenges young people tell us they face in school and what are the adult’s views on these?
• What are the implications of learning more about the experiences of adolescents in schools?

Methodology Two English secondary schools were recruited for data collection, one rural and one urban. Recruitment of pupil and adult participants was undertaken by presenting the research to year groups in their school assemblies and addressing a Staff Training session. From this, volunteers came forward. Using a child-centred approach to data collection (Marthner 1997) a meeting was set up with the young volunteers in order to present the research in more detail, to answer questions and to explain the consent forms for themselves and their parents and carers. This familiarisation session proved helpful once the interviews started. Four small focus groups of 3-5 young people, from Years 8 and 9, were interviewed for 40 minutes to an hour, using semi-structured methods, in a classroom. The questions were short, open-ended, and audio-recorded. The adults were interviewed individually in a room of their own choosing. The aim was to provide a safe, private, and comfortable environment. The issue of trust between us was considered, Charmaz (2006) pointing out that the status of the participant is significant in any interview. Adolescent pupils were asked ‘what is it like to be an adolescent in a secondary school?’ as well as what challenges and benefits they experienced in school. Similar questions were addressed to the adults with space offered for them to recall their own adolescent lives and their careers in education. The research was conducted as sensitively as possible to minimise harm and to adhere to ethical guidelines (British Educational Research Association 2018). The intention was to ‘capture as much of reality as possible’ (Denzin and Lincoln 2013:17) of the participants’ lives and to hear what it meant to be an adolescent from those who had experienced it (Creswell 2013). I felt respect for both the young people and the adults, stemming from my own experience of working in secondary schools. An initial contact with a pupil came in the form of ‘shadowing’ a girl from Year 8. That time, spent in classrooms, sitting at a desk, watching a class-teacher, and glancing round at the posters displayed, gave some sense of what it feels like to be a pupil in school. Such observation in the field can ‘increase the researcher’s general understanding of the children’s local culture and social structure’ (Holstein and Gubrium 2003:41).

Conclusions/Findings The emerging findings from this study show that transition from primary to secondary school and from childhood to adolescence impact, sometimes negatively, on the young. Some teenagers experienced adolescence as ‘hell’, others saw change as beneficial. Key themes for the adolescents were: change, responsibility, being judged, and equality. Pressure came from exams, schoolwork, and their peer-group, with girls acknowledging physical and emotional changes. Their status, between children and adults, felt, for some, like ‘limbo’. The ‘overwhelming’ experience of transition from primary to secondary led to feelings of powerlessness. The staff reported that there were positive relationships between themselves and pupils and that they listened to the young people. Yet some teenagers felt let down by the school. The adults listed opportunities for young people to express their views with none of the young people referring to this. Social media was a cause of concern for the adults, yet to the adolescents it serves as a lifeline. The narratives heard were complex yet often compatible as well as conflicting. Whilst the adults demonstrated their professional knowledge and understanding of young people, the same views were not always articulated by the teenagers. The adults assumed the young would want to be successful, do well, and reach goals; the adolescents were mostly concerned with the present. However, both groups articulated the pressure of exams and the challenge of transition from primary to secondary school. One commonality seems to be that they are under stress from a flawed system; the staff struggling with adherence to government guidelines, the young feeling ignored by the school, their family, society. The English teenagers who participated in this study, like those across Europe, want acceptance, support, and an acknowledgement that their views matter.

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