Translating Learners, Researchers, and Qualitative Approaches through Investigations of Students’ Experiences in School

This article uses the conceptual framework offered by ‘translation’ to argue for transforming students into authorities and agents in research on educational practice. Drawing on various definitions of translation and highlighting the influence of recent feminist perspectives on translation studies, the article presents two cases that illustrate how learners can be translated into co-researchers of educational experiences, researchers translated into partners with students in making meaning through the research process, and qualitative research’s approaches and modes of presenting findings translated into new versions of those processes and products

Participatory instructional redesign by students and teachers in secondary education: effects on perceptions of instruction

Könings, K. D., Brand-Gruwel, S., & Van Merriënboer, J. J. G. (2011). Participatory instructional redesign by students and teachers in secondary education: effects on perceptions of instruction. Instructional Science, 39(5), 737–762.Students’ perceptions of instruction are important because they direct the learning of students. The fact that teachers have only limited knowledge of these perceptions is likely to threaten the effectiveness of learning, because congruence between interpretations of an instructional intervention is necesarry for its optimal use. This study examines participatory design as a strategy for taking student perceptions into account in instructional re/design. Participatory design meetings of groups of teachers and seven co-designing students in a secondary education setting identified changes to improve the regular education process. The results on changes in student perceptions, perceived-desired discrepancy, and teacher-student disagreement showed some improvement for the co-designers but, unexpectedly, limited or even negative effects for the non-co-designing students. Possible causes are discussed. Participatory design seems to have potential for improving education, but further research is needed