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How student voice is viewed is complex. Increasingly, effort has been made to include student voice in teaching and learning, with student voice positioned in different ways, from the instrumental to the transformative. The success and sustainability of student voice efforts require a more critical understanding of the participatory efforts of both teachers and students, as well as the interplay between teachers' and students' voices. Using a case-study approach, within an interpretive paradigm, this study explores teachers' and students' discourses on student voice at the beginning of a larger study situated within five English Language classrooms in Singapore. The findings highlight the discursive framings of both teachers and students and foreground spaces of convergence and divergence. Both teachers and students share similar views on the possibilities and promises of student voice in teaching and learning, which centred largely around pedagogic and performative reasons. The data also revealed a shared sense of vulnerability and fear, surfacing real, yet tacit and lesser known boundaries and issues which both teachers and students see as affecting student voice efforts. The findings suggest that student voice work needs to be situated in an environment of trust and authentic listening to harness its potential.

Singapore has prospered since independence by developing its human resources under a distinctly Singaporean meritocratic system. Recent developments in public discourse, and findings from interviews with leading Singaporean personalities, however, point towards the system's increasing undesirability. Among other problems, our study participants blame the system for worsening class divisions in society; for damaging the mental well-being of students; and for leading to a narrowing of society's definitions of success while leaving Singaporean workers unprepared for challenges of the future economy. Our paper shows that for Singaporeans to be ready for these challenges and to find purpose and meaning in the future economy, the current meritocratic systems require reform. We argue for a new kind of political decision-making to allow Singaporean society to reorder its basic values and priorities towards a more democratic, inclusive and compassionate meritocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]