Oral history for student empowerment: Capturing students’ inner voices

Through a close analysis of the oral history of Victor, a Hispanic student in an affluent Anglo institution, this paper provides an example of how oral history methods can capture student voices and uncover the silencing that often takes place in well-intentioned educational institutions, and demonstrates how some of the multiple voices that exist within students and school communities are legitimated, while others are not. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of inner voice, the analysis illustrates the potential of oral history methods for probing the multiple voices and lived experience of students. It suggests how these voices help to reveal how students construct their identities in educational institutions.