The ideas of Student Voice have come to prominence for practitioners, administrators and policy-makers in various educational contexts over the last two decades (Rudduck, 2007; Sebba and Robinson, 2010; Fielding, 2004). In educational policies in England the term Student Voice ‘refers to ways of listening to the views of pupils and/or involving them in decision-making’ (DfE, 2014). This growth of interest has been brought about through a number of different and cumulative factors: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child included children’s right to be heard; democracy and liberalisation related ideas in schooling; and a growing commitment to citizenship education. In addition, the evidence provided by some studies, suggests that consulting pupils about their teaching and learning experience brings benefits to students in terms of learning, motivation, engagement and potentially attainment (Rudduck and McIntyre, 2007; Sebba and Robinson, 2010; Covell et al, 2010).

However, the implementation of educational initiatives is by no means a simple process (Bridges, 2014). Social and power relationships between students and teachers mean that there are always potential barriers to taking the voice and opinions of pupils seriously in institutional settings. This means that there can be a discrepancy between Student Voice policy and everyday practice in the school and in the classroom. Student Voice is a new initiative in Kazakhstan and teachers have little or limited experience of it. Moreover, broadly speaking it seems that such democratic ideas are not common for the current societal culture in the country, which makes this study more interesting with relation to its historical and political contexts.

Being a part of the former United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for more than 70 years, Kazakhstan has 25 years of independence now. However, ‘legacies of the Soviet era still pervade the Kazakhstan education system’ (McLaughlin and Ayubayeva, 2015, p. 55). Some characteristics which can describe the Soviet system are universal free education, centralised and state-controlled policy, incorporation of state ideology and moral education into the highly pre-specified curriculum, where the needs and goals of the state were promoted rather than of the individual (ibid). During the first decade of independence changes in Kazakhstani education system can be labeled as ‘travelling policy’ (Silova, 2005 cited in ibid, p. 56), which represents adoption of western educational discourses. The current reform in the education system (Bridges, 2014) is believed to be based on ‘[Kazakhstanis] own vision of how and why’ (McLaughlin and Ayubayeva, 2015, p. 56). Therefore, the network of twenty brand-new Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) has been established with the aim to modernise the secondary education system in Kazakhstan (SPED, 2010). These schools represent highly selective and ‘elite’ institutions in terms of academic abilities, which act as experimental sites of innovative educational initiatives in the country. The research context for the study is one of these NIS schools.

This study will represent an investigation of the relationship between teachers and students and their ideas of Student Voice in one NIS school in Kazakhstan. The research questions are:

• What are teachers’ and students’ attitudes to ‘Student Voice’?
• To what extent is Student Voice embraced in the school?
  • from a student and a teacher perspectives
• What constitutes the relationships between teachers and students?

The purpose of this study is to begin to understand to what extend Student Voice ideas are embraced in the school; how the social environment shapes the relationships between teachers and students in the school; and what might constitute the power relations between teachers and students. I believe that this study can add to the knowledge of Student Voice ideas, especially in the Kazakhstani, post-Soviet context.

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