This article explores the significance of actively engaging with students in school about matters that concern them. The discussion draws upon data from a large-scale mixed methods study in Australia that investigated how 'wellbeing' in schools is understood and facilitated. The qualitative phase of the research included semistructured focus group interviews with 606 students, aged between 6-17 years, which incorporated an activity inviting students to imagine, draw and discuss an ideal school that promoted their wellbeing. This data reveals how capable students are of providing rich, nuanced accounts of their experience that could potentially inform school improvement. While varying somewhat across the age range involved, students identified creative ways that pedagogy, the school environment and relationships could be improved, changed or maintained to assist their wellbeing. They placed particular emphasis on the importance of opportunities to 'have a say' in relation to these matters. Such findings challenge deeply entrenched assumptions about who has the authority to speak on matters of student wellbeing, while also highlighting the potential of more democratic, participatory and inclusive approaches to change and improvement in schools.

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Much has now been written on student participation at school. Yet a lack of conceptual clarity, contestation over purpose and benefits, and uncertainty about how to culturally embed and effectively facilitate participation in school contexts continue to pose considerable challenges. This article reports the qualitative findings from a large-scale, mixed-method study that sought to explore how participation is perceived and practised in schools. The qualitative phase involved students from Years 7-10 (n = 177) and staff (n = 32) across 10 government and Catholic secondary schools in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The data demonstrate that considerable efforts are being made in NSW schools to expand opportunities through which students might 'participate', with these explored across three key arenas of school life: the classroom; co-curricular activities, including formal participatory structures; and informal relational spaces. Although participatory opportunities were largely ad hoc and often dependent upon the approach of individual teachers or school initiatives, differing enactments of childhood and adulthood were identifiable between the three arenas, along with varying expectations in this regard. The classroom emerged as a positive arena at present, and one in which adult-child relations are beginning to become reconfigured. The co-curricular arena was much more contested, with the breadth of potential participatory opportunities perhaps distracting from the need to address underlying intergenerational issues. However, informal relational encounters between students and teachers were becoming increasingly egalitarian, and these offer scope for creating the cultural preconditions such that student participation might expand more evenly across school life.At the moment it's just very much skimming the surface and we do something, 'Oh that wasn't a bad idea . . . ' but it's not really embedded, it doesn't have that well, fine-tuned and rounded approach. (Principal, School A) 1034 A. Graham et al.

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iconORCID: 0000-0002-5310-9144, Cashmore, Judy and Bessell, Sharon (2022) Exploring the associations between student participation, wellbeing and recognition at school. Cambridge Journal of Education .