Progressive Teachers Network

Student voice is any expression of any student about anything, anytime, anywhere as it relates to schools, learning, teaching and education. After more than twenty years promoting the power and necessity of engaging students in education transformation, I keep wondering whether we should be listening to student voice.

The efficacy of learners to make substantial, systemic decisions affecting the entire education system as decision-makers, teachers, evaluators and advocates has been demonstrated repeatedly. Researchers and educators have found that as students become engaged in these ways, learners feel…

• More ownership over their educative experiences,
• More investment over their learning community and,
• More allyship with their peers and their teachers.

In turn, we can see that education outcomes can improve, student engagement increases and feelings of professional satisfaction among educators can accelerate.

While these outcomes sound enticing, they are often sold short by well-meaning but

poorly informed educators and administrators throughout education. Intrigued by the possibilities, they will set up student focus groups with small, select proportions of the student body, they will create a student advisory position on their committee or board, or they will start a “student voice” section of the professional development day. All of these are well-intentioned activities designed to listen to student voice. For a short time, they provide input into educators’ thinking, data for leaders’ initiatives, or interesting perspectives for public consumption. However, none of these are actually transformative.

What two decades of research projects and advocacy campaigns focused on engaging students as partners in education transformation have taught me is that we need more than mere implications, more than possible potentials, and more than well-meaning but poorly thought through activities.

Students need more, educators deserve better and our schools require nothing less. Keep reading for another blog to learn how the Progressive Teacher Network promotes more than student voice.