This paper focuses on an on-going case study in a secondary school in the London borough of Havering and the collaboration of the school with a local university. The original focus of the case study was to look at students as informants / respondents and their journey to becoming student researchers within the context of student voice.  The paper examines data collected from follow-up interviews with nominated pupil-representatives from this student voice project as well as those pupils not directly involved. These interviews were carried out by representatives of the university who were involved with the initial project.  The focus of these interviews has been to explore if these students felt that that they had ‘joint responsibility’ (Huddlestone, 2007) in the developments taking place within their school.  The paper also focuses on the latest developments involving these student researchers in their visit to a Danish school.  The paper has been theoretically and methodologically framed by questions that relate student voice to identity contruction at a societal, institutional and individual level. The methodological dilemma has been to adopt an analytical framework that acknowledges some of the ‘macro’ large scale structural processes that can influence student voice initiatives while simultaneously addressing the ‘micro’ small-scale individual actions and meanings of the respondents that are so important to us as qualitative researchers. Layder (1993; 1994; 1998) recognises the existence of a social reality, with social structures and currents which have an existence over and above the existence of individual actors. Yet he also recognises the significance of human agency in the formation of those structures. In so doing he praises interpretive approaches to sociological research with a focus on identities allowing us to resolve this methodological dilemma.  Layder's research map (1993) will assist in the development of the European comparative element this project anticipates.  We draw on, amongst others, Thomson and Gunter (2005) who identify Student Voice as having three distinct levels or approaches. The first is one of consultation, where pupils are consulted on a matter and it may or may not have an impact or an outcome. The second, is when pupils are engaged in the school self evaluation process.  Finally, the third level is for students to become researchers in their own right. The students are empowered to carry out research into their schooling and this research can lead to recommendations or actual change within the institution (Fielding and Bragg, 2003).

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