The voice is a crucial tool that teachers use daily to carry out their pedagogical practices. Its importance is highlighted by the significant amount of medical and quantitative research that has been done, in terms of preserving it and limiting the negative impact it can have on students’ achievements (see for example Martins et al., 2014; Rosenberg et al., 1999). The few qualitative research on voices has shown that they have the power to change the meaning of a sentence by, for example, merely varying the tone (Le Breton, 2011). In that way, our perception of certain voices can impact how we perceive people (ibid). In education, where a hierarchical relationship could be installed between a teacher and a student, this could be significant: how students perceive their teacher’s voice tone could influence such a power relationship, and Koch (2017) even suggests that this could further influence the kind of citizens students will become later in life. Therefore, the teacher’s voice is a powerful tool that could influence students’ achievement as well as their behaviour (Koch, 2017; Moustapha-Sabeur & Aguilar Río, 2014).

Nonetheless, the teacher’s voice was not always present in classrooms. Landahl (2019) has shown that in the 19^th century, the students’ voices filled up the rooms to repeat and memorize lessons. Towards the end of the century, a shift occurred: teachers were asked to ‘activate’ students by explaining and asking them questions, making their voices more dominant in classrooms (ibid). Despite the impact of a teacher’s voice in education and what it could tell about educational beliefs throughout history, there is still a lack of research on the teacher’s voice in qualitative and historical research.

This paper is an attempt to open the doors of the field of history of education on the teacher’s voice, by inscribing the research in the framework of New Cultural History of Education. One of the concerns of this framework is to understand and counter forms of power that can be hidden in educational historiographies as well as in the educational system itself throughout time (Fendler, 2019). The paper thus supposes that the teacher’s voice can be considered a powerful tool that needs to be understood more thoroughly. By doing this, the paper aims to add a new layer to different powers involved in education throughout history and to introduce a discussion on the potential power of the master’s voice.

More specifically, this paper investigates the descriptions of the teacher’s voice in the French-speaking Belgian context between 1880 and 1914. The period investigated is marked by the so-called School War, which opposed Catholic and liberal visions of education in policymaking. It ends with the beginning of the First World War, which marks a turn in many aspects of society, including education. Two research questions are investigated: the first one explores how teachers were advised to use their voice, and how their voice was described in pedagogical journals and manuals. This allows an analysis of whether the way teachers’ voices have been described has been the same as today, i.e. in terms of concerns for vocal health mainly. More broadly, such research could also give insight into how the voice has been seen as part of the didactic tools throughout history. On the other hand, the paper will compare the presentations of voice between Catholic and liberal pedagogical journals. This could inform us of the influences that pedagogical beliefs could have had and therefore, it could start a reflection on how education has been defined.

Belgian pedagogical journals written in French were chosen as the principal form of primary source to investigate the questions. Unlike diaries, pedagogical journals offer a wide range of information such as letters from teachers, descriptions of what inspectors saw in classrooms, reports of pedagogical conferences, or articles from pedagogues and psychologists. Journals can thus give a variety of insight from descriptions of practices to depictions of actual teaching in class and more ideological arguments. The language, i.e. French, was chosen as it was still the dominant language of the intellectual sphere during the investigated period (Witte, 2011). Journals both from liberal and Catholic beliefs were investigated to question their influence on pedagogical beliefs. However, because many of the journals that are within the investigated period and still conserved in universities and national archives were liberal-oriented, Catholic pedagogical manuals were also added. The journals were selected from the indexes of Belgian pedagogical journals published by De Vroede and Bosmans Hermans (1974, 1976). The manuals were found through research on the online platform of the university libraries of KU Leuven (Limo). The selection was done through a search of the keyword ‘pedagogy’, and a limitation on the type of document, the place of publishing, and the time frame. The liberal-oriented journals that were analysed are Le Progrès (1861 – 1888), Moniteur des instituteurs primaires (1872 – today), and l’Ecole belge (1909 – 1913). The only Catholic-oriented journal that was investigated is l’école Catholique (1881 – 1893). Four Catholic-oriented manuals were investigated, namely Traité théorique et pratique de méthodologie (1882), Résumé du cours de pédagogie par un ancien directeur d’école normale (1880), Quelques directions méthodologiques pour le personnel des écoles primaires et les maîtresses Frœbéliennes (1905), and Cours complet de pédagogie et de méthodologie (1885). To find relevant articles, the first volume of each journal was read to find the type of keywords to search for, as almost no explicit mention of the word ‘voice’ was made in article titles. Next, articles related to pedagogy, obedience, children’s attention, ways to teach certain topics such as history or geography, and qualities that teachers were expected to have, were looked for in the table of contents. Those articles were indeed most likely to deal with the teacher’s voice.

The paper confirms three previous findings on how the teacher’s voice was presented: the need to vary its tone, the role of the teacher’s voice in his authority, and the teacher’s speech as a model for students (Calcoen & Verstraete, 2022). Unique findings were descriptions of voices for different classes, with an emphasis on expressing emotions such as passion through voice. The voice was also often linked to the word ‘soul’, together with expressions such as ‘kindness’, ‘patience’, or ‘firmness’. Concerns for the teacher’s vocal health could not be found. No difference between Catholic and liberal writings was found. This means that teachers in both systems received similar advice in terms of voice use. It could be explained by the fact that Catholic teachers wanted to keep their professionalism by ensuring that students understood the study content, in opposition to the Catholic authority’s belief which emphasized more routine memorization, especially in terms of religious teaching (Depaepe et al., 2000). Overall, the findings confirm that the teacher's voice is a very crucial part of the teaching practice, closely connected to ideas of how and what education should be. Yet, teachers’ voices seem to be neglected in historical and qualitative research, perhaps due to their embodied features. This might also explain why the voice was rarely explicitly described in articles. To conclude, this paper induces a plea to expand this field of research, with further attention needed on bodily practices and what they can tell about educational beliefs. A more longitudinal study on the teacher’s voice is also interesting to search how the perceptions of the teacher’s voice have evolved, and the implications for educational beliefs.

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