What Students Tell Us About School If We Ask

This article examines what school climate factors students perceive as helping them be successful in school, and what school administrators can do to aid the process. Specifically, the questions that drove this inquiry were How does sociocultural theory impact student voice and student engagement in the classroom? How does caring pedagogy impact student voice and student engagement in the classroom? What school climate factors do students perceive as helping them to be successful in school

Hearing the student voice : promoting and encouraging the effective use of the student voice to enhance professional development in learning, teaching and assessment within higher education

This is an ESCalate development project led by Fiona Campbell of Napier University that was completed in 2007. The Hearing the Student Voice project aimed to promote and encourage the use of the student voice to enhance the effectiveness of academic professional development and ultimately the learning experience of students. Students can have a powerful impact on academic professional development aimed at enhancing learning, teaching and assessment practice. By providing qualitative insights about the nature of their learning experience, students can bring both valid and valuable viewpoints and motivate staff who are engaged by the students' perspective and often admire their perspicacity. This report records the progress and achievements of the Hearing the Student Voice project, funded by ESCalate to promote and encourage the use of the student voice to enhance the effectiveness of academic professional development in learning, teaching and assessment practice and ultimately the learning experience of students. The report has been written by the team representing the four universities who collaborated on the projec

Research and student voice

This paper is written partly as a response to a critique from Sally Baker and her colleagues (2006) about an article that John Bamber and I published (Bamber and Tett, 2001) in 2001. Their critique was based on the grounds that we had developed our arguments in a way that depended ‘on an assumption about the\ud veracity of student participants [that] represents a solipsistic retreat into a state of analysis where things are the case because people say they are’ (p 175). Criticism is never comfortable but it did provoke me into thinking about the nature of evidence that is derived from interviews and focus groups with students. Does this imply, as Baker and colleagues argue, that this methodology inevitably means that researchers have ‘not taken a systematically sociologically informed analysis of the nature of institutions or society or the material obstacles to change but have instead relied on the subjective individualised realm of student experiences’ (p 175)? I will argue that this is an over-simplistic interpretation of data that are based on students’ voices and I will draw on findings from a variety of educational provision ranging from universities to informal literacy provision in community settings to examine the role of the researcher in listening to and reinterpreting the detail of people’s lives. There are of course many issues raised by data derived from using student voices as a method of enquiry so I will begin with the problems raised for research that is based on listening to, and interpreting from, interviews with students

Middle Grades Democratic Education in Neoliberal Times: Examining Youth Social Action Projects as a Path Forward

Although democratic education has long been considered a cornerstone of the developmentally responsive middle school model, current neoliberal priorities in education pose a particular threat to the democratic purpose of education. Due to their emphasis on student voice and civic engagement, youth social action projects present one opportunity to preserve democratic education as a focal point of the middle school concept. In this article, I offer a case description of a middle grades youth social action project. Incorporating student perspectives, I then critically examine the extent to which the project was successful in its goal of promoting student voice and present themes in the lessons students reported learning as a result of their engagement with the social action project. The findings indicate that although middle school students faced significant challenges, the social action project was nonetheless largely successful in incorporating student voice. The majority of middle school participants reported feeling that they had a voice in their school through the social action project. Middle school students also reported learning valuable lessons connected to three themes: 1) hard work and determination, 2) teamwork and leadership skills, and 3) empowerment. In closing, I offer implications for key stakeholders in middle level education concerning the path forward for democratic education in neoliberal times

Giving a Student Voice to California's Dropout Crisis

Shares what first-year high school students find motivating or discouraging; how they view family, peer, and school factors; and how demographic characteristics, attitudes toward school, and support networks affect the odds of their dropping out

The Whalesong

Pot's legal!! Is it a myth? -- V-Day gets support from UAS -- Change is everywhere -- Be different: Buy Gap -- Life in the matrix -- Be your own valentine -- Mad-ness at the S.A.C.! -- Student government profiles -- Student spotlight: Amber Wood a real live cowgirl -- Recent bills passed by the student government -- Review of "Working" -- Juneau beat -- Preview -- Voice on campus poll -- And all that jazz -- The best album you never heard..

Student Voice report

Student Voice report and recommendations