Over the past few months, I’ve been speaking to a number of independent and international schools about my work in youth development and early careers guidance.
I assumed we would be discussing exam performance, university applications, or study skills.
We didn’t.
Without exception, what they wanted to talk about was voice — and something called learning wounds.
I have now spoken to four schools, all either international or top private institutions, and each conversation has circled back to the same idea:
Helping young people find — and keep — their voice is becoming central to education.
That surprised me. But it also made complete sense.
What Are Learning Wounds?
You may remember that I organised a talk at my university on the subject of learning wounds. That event has since grown into a small research group. Four of us have spent the past year developing the concept more fully, and we are now completing the first draft of a co-authored article exploring the science, psychology and socioeconomics of learning — and how deeply it connects to emotion.
The phrase learning wounds is deliberately flexible. It gives space for people to recognise their own version of it.
Learning wounds might be:
Cultural
Cognitive
Rooted in anxiety or stress
Linked to learning differences
Socioeconomic
Structural within school systems
It seems increasingly clear to me that almost everyone carries some form of them.
How Learning Wounds Affect Student Voice
Learning wounds are not the only barrier to confidence — but they can silence a young person’s voice in subtle, lasting ways.
As students, we often absorb academic experiences as identity:
“I’m not a maths person.”
“I’m bad at writing.”
“I’m not academic.”
These statements rarely begin as truths. They begin as experiences. A low grade. A comparison. A comment. A moment of embarrassment.
But over time, they harden.
And once a child believes something about their intellectual ability, they quietly shape their future around it.
Subjects are dropped.
Career options are ruled out.
Ambition narrows.
The tragedy is that many of these identities are neither accurate nor permanent.
A Year 6 Classroom and a Reminder
Recently, I ran a workshop on Voice with a Year 6 class.
What struck me most was that every child seemed to know who they were.
One girl who adored reading and libraries said she wanted to be a writer or an actress. She spoke about it as though it were entirely natural.
A boy declared he wanted to be an astronaut. His list of ambitions was long and joyful. Nothing seemed impossible to him.
Then there was an adult in the room.
He had once wanted to be a pilot. But he believed he was “bad at maths” and chose another path. Interestingly, his favourite pastime is motorcycling in the mountains — as close to flying as he can get.
The only person who hadn’t followed his original voice was the adult.
Children do not begin without voice.
They lose it somewhere along the way.
Why This Matters for Schools
Developmental psychologist Linda Gottfredson writes about how adolescents begin to “close doors” — not because they lack ambition, but because they absorb messages about what is realistic, respectable, or suitable for someone like them.
Gender expectations.
Social prestige.
Academic labelling.
Perceived ability.
This is where learning wounds become powerful.
If students believe that their school performance defines who they are, then grades carry emotional weight far beyond assessment.
If we want confident, thoughtful, self-directed young adults, we cannot treat wellbeing and learning as separate conversations.
Learning itself is emotional.
Schools I’ve spoken with recently understand this. They are not looking for superficial confidence workshops. They are asking deeper questions:
How do we protect intellectual confidence?
How do we prevent academic identity from becoming fixed too early?
How do we help students recover their voice if they’ve lost it?
These are encouraging conversations.
It is not that young people lack voice.
It is that it can be slowly eroded by experience.
For those interested in Voice Theory and the developing research around Learning Wounds, I’ll be sharing more soon.
And if you are part of a school leadership, careers, or counselling team and this resonates, I would genuinely welcome a conversation.