E.07. Learner Voice for Democratic Learning

Learner Voice centres adult learners in policy and decision-making by offering appropriate ways of listening to their concerns to develop more supportive educational experiences and relationships. Learner Voice seeks to extend long-standing values of dialogue, equality, and empowerment in adult education beyond the classroom into institutional and policy-making domains (Fielding, 2010). Learner Voice emerges as a vital space for ‘bottom-up' participation (See Beresford, 2016), one in which learners can articulate recognitions and misrecognitions and challenge wider social, cultural and economic inequalities (Fleming, 2021). At stake is what Gert Biesta (2016) has called ‘democratic learning’, the education that flows from participating in constructing a common life together.

This panel invites papers seeking to engage with critical questions for Learner Voice advocates. How do adult education systems listen to adult learners? How do they act on what learners say? What are the implications for democracy - in our education systems and in our society – of learner participation in decision-making? What does it mean to adult learners to make their recognitions and misrecognitions known? What are the implications of not listening to Learner Voice?

We welcome comparative perspectives aimed at sharing diverse Learner Voice theories and practices. From accredited learning to popular education, we are interested in discussing how Learner Voice takes shape in specific adult learning spaces and policy systems. From policy consultation through participatory budgets to popular assemblies, what institutional forms might voice take? To what extent can we have confidence in meaningful participation, substantive change, and democratic learning?