Student voice across contexts: Fostering student agency in today’s schools

Abstract

Student voice is a concept and a set of approaches that position students alongside credentialed educators as critics and creators of educational practice. Student voice and student agency are closely linked when school stakeholders connect the sound of students speaking with students having the power to influence analyses of, decisions about, and practices in schools. In this article I present an overview of forms of student voice work that support cultivating student agency in school spaces, in research on teaching and learning in those spaces, and in authoring publications about teaching and learning in those spaces. Drawing on empirical studies conducted in a range of contexts, the examples refer to students, teachers, administrators, and researchers working together to: analyze teaching and learning in ways that inform classroom practices; employ a wide variety of methodologies to engage in research that leads to action; and author and co-author analyses of practice and research that are guided by students' own interpretative frames as well as filled with their own words. Implications of this discussion include suggestions for teachers, school principals, teacher educators, and researchers regarding how to support student voice such that it fosters the developent of student agency.

Pupils’ voices in teachers’ collaborative professional learning in Lesson Study

“…Researchers, such as Cook-Sather (2006, 2020 and Robertson (2017) relate pupil voice to student agency. Cook-Sather (2020) argues that pupil voice can foster agency, when "students are working with teachers and researchers to analyse classroom practice, engage in research through various methods, and author and coauthor texts, all with the goal of maximizing and democratizing education for everyone involved" (p. 182).…”

Emojilogía: propuesta metodológica para la transformación escolar desde y con el estudiantado

“…Al respecto, se han desarrollado diversas aproximaciones que tienen como #nalidad relevar la voz del estudiantado como una estrategia para repensar la escuela, sus dinámicas y objetivos (Cook-Sather, 2020;Nelson & Charteris, 2020). Desde esta perspectiva, es necesario adentrarse en la densa trama de significados del estudiantado (Carceller-Maicas, 2018;Jara, 2018), donde el lugar del grupo de investigación es el de aprendiz de los códigos culturales y las relaciones que logran establecer con y desde su entorno social (Vergara et al, 2015).…”

“…Por lo tanto, urge la necesidad de construir apuestas metodológicas que den relevancia a la niñez como un actor social (Vergara et al, 2015) y que permitan puntualizar en la gestión de espacios e instancias de escucha de la voz estudiantil (Cook-Sather, 2020;Nelson & Charteris, 2020). Además, esto implica el despliegue de un enfoque dinámico que contemple la dimensión con$ictiva del encuentro con un otro como inherente a la interacción (Yáñez-Urbina et al, 2018) y una sensibilidad ante la multiplicidad de formas de entender el mundo que cohabitan en la escuela .…”

“I expect boredom”: Students' experiences and expectations of multiliteracies learning

“…Students' views can be powerful in shaping the ways that they learn as well. Cook‐Sather (2020, p. 182) argues that students' views can “exert influence in their learning context, to transform their own and others' learning experiences, and to expand learning.” The valuing of students' perspectives can also bring about a shift in educators' understanding of how best to facilitate learning and influence pedagogical practice by “opening up spaces and minds not only to the sound but also to the presence and power of students” (Cook‐Sather, 2006, p. 363). As such, scholars have opined that education reforms “cannot succeed and should not proceed without much more direct involvement of students” (Levin, 2000, p. 157).…”