Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green
Wed, 14 Jan 2015 13:34:00 GMT
“Give young people a voice…
…and listen to what they say,” argues former first Children’s Commissioner Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, who says that many people in authority haven’t the faintest idea of what it’s like to be a young person today.
Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green gave a special lecture as part of the 'Finding a Voice' conference at the University of Huddersfield.
The lecture was given as part of an innovative teaching and learning experience for final year students on the BA (Hons) Childhood Studies course in the School of Education and Professional Development. As part of a module called Finding a Voice: Children and Young People, students presented a range of papers at the conference. These showcased how they could more consciously place children’s voices at the heart of their studies and future practice through researching children’s experiences of participation and levels of meaningful engagement in decision-making in a number of settings such as Children’s Centres and Schools.
The opportunity to develop themselves as researchers was fantastic and, as Professor Sir Aynsley Green commented “I thoroughly enjoyed meeting such an engaged group of young people”. For his part he set a challenge to students, staff and the University to really consider whether we have the courage and compassion to genuinely have a child-centred ethos in all that we do.
