Relocating the writer's voice - from voice to story and beyond

Voice has been a persistent and recurring metaphor in English teaching. Conceptually, it took centre stage in Australia in the 1980s through writing process pedagogies, where students were advised to find their own voices in writing, teachers were advised to listen to student voices, and a 'clear personal voice' in writing was regarded as the mark of an effective writer (Gilbert 1990, p. 61). Voice has also played a central role in a variety of critical and emancipatory pedagogies where it has been used as a motivation to write, as a mode of politicisation, and as a way to understand and disrupt patriarchy and other oppressive social formations.