Key Takeaway: This engaging review unravels the power of ‘student voice,’ where students become catalysts for social change in spaces such as classroom instruction, organizational transformation, and the fruitful exploration of student power dynamics. Discover actionable insights such as ‘consultation’ – a partnership between teachers and students to discuss learning activities, and ‘Youth Participatory Action Research’ – enabling students as co-researchers for projects that create meaningful societal change. Incorporating these kinds of student voice initiatives can boost student metacognition, self-directed learning, motivation, and inclusivity, as well as stimulate positive organizational changes and civic engagement.
Criteria: This research paper provides an extensive current overview of student voice concepts and initiatives by a prominent researcher.
Resource: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JEA-01-2018-0007/full/html ($)
Title: Student voice in secondary schools: the possibility for deeper change
Year: 2018
Author: Dana Mitra
Primary Author: Dana Mitra, https://ed.psu.edu/directory/dr-dana-mitra
Summation and Insights:
This article reviews several research studies in student voice, in which students become active agents in creating social change. Student voice has a broad range of possibilities, from providing students with spaces to reflect upon problems and provide potential solutions to empowering students to actively seek reform through civic processes. This review examined student voice efforts across a number of educational studies in relation to three important categories: classroom instruction, organizational change, and the relation between student voice and power.
Student voice in the classroom is called “consultation,” defined as teachers and students partnering to discuss teaching and learning activities and creating structured opportunities for student feedback. Consultation has several positive classroom effects, including improving students’ ability to recognize that they are growing professional skill sets and pertinent knowledge (metacognition), self-directed learning, and increased student interest. YPAR (Youth Participatory Action Research) is also a promising form of creating student voice experiences in the classroom. In YPAR work, students become co-researchers on projects that have public impact or address social inequity. A compelling example of YPAR came from Dewey Elementary, where third graders helped design and implement a plan to set up recycling and composting options in classrooms and the teacher’s lounge.
Student voice can also have a positive impact on organizational change. One potential application of student voice is identifying students in danger of failing the system or dropping out and transforming them into insightful agents who can help administrators and educators identify structural problems (classroom procedures, discrimination, etc.) and craft real solutions for student success. Another exciting application of student voice to organizational change is the creation of institutionalized roles (inclusion in formal committees, youth councils, etc.) where students can participate in the decision-making process. An excellent example of this is the Pritchard Committee in Kentucky, a student-led organization that mobilizes young people to involve themselves in educational policy in the state of Kentucky.
Studies in student voice and power suggest that implementing strategies for student agency and activism can be difficult for numerous reasons. Poorly thought out or haphazard efforts may disempower students or make them feel like tokens, mere symbols that “their school is doing something.” Given that student voice is about youth-adult partnerships, activities must be thoughtfully designed and provide opportunities for reflection in order not to lapse into traditional student/teacher roles. But successful attempts to institutionalize student voice projects and initiatives have the ability to empower students and can contribute to important educational initiatives, such as inclusivity, student motivation, academic performance, positive organizational change and civic engagement.