A look back

Student-empowered curricular change

By Jenny Flaumenhaft & Lyn Mikel Brown, March 2019, pp. 13-19

Increasing student autonomy can in turn boost engagement and success, according to this 2019 Kappan article. In the piece, Jenny Flaumenhaft and Lyn Mikel Brown describe their efforts to bolster student performance at a rural elementary school in Maine using microadventures and “somedays” — two educational constructs that promote student autonomy.

Microadventures were crafted to increase students’ movement and outdoor time in the curriculum, two things students said they wanted more of. “Somedays,” meanwhile, consisted of asking each student to choose one thing they hoped to experience before the end of the school year — and working with that student to make it happen. One student with selective mutism wanted to lead a science lesson and talked at school for the first time. Two other students wanted to build a shelter outdoors, and their entire class learned important lessons about planning, cooperation, and mathematics.

After a year of microadventures and “somedays,” teachers reported feeling less stressed and burned out, students were more engaged, and test scores had increased. Staff agreed the intervention had permanently changed their outlook on education and the value of student choice. “Shifting your mind doesn’t cost anything; it’s a cheap change,” one teacher told researchers. “People just need to change their thinking.”

“Students belong in all places where decisions are made, but particularly where decisions are made on education.”

— Shiva Rajbhandari, who won a school board seat as a high school senior, quoted in Education Week, October 11, 2022.

Conversation piece

This issue focuses on cultivating students’ leadership skills. Use these questions to reflect on the issue with your colleagues:

What skills do students need to be effective leaders, and what role should schools have in building these skills in students?
What kinds of opportunities does your school offer for students to practice leadership? Which do you see as most valuable?
To what extent does your school empower students to participate in making decisions about how the school functions?
How might you expand your view of leadership to give more students opportunities to lead, whether in the classroom, the school, or the community?

PDK members have access to discussion guides related to specific articles in each issue of Kappan. Log in to the member portal and access the discussion guides at https://members.pdkintl.org/PDK_Member_Discussion_Questions.

“It’s time for our students to assume a role far more important than that of a pupil. It’s time we teach our students to be citizens, not through a textbook, but through making their vision, their vote, and their voice heard in the educational process.”

— Sean Furbush, in a Billerica Minuteman op-ed, published May 8, 2021, when he was a high school junior.

Research connections

A student voice framework

What is student voice? A 2023 article published by the Educational Administration Quarterly sought to clarify the term’s definition. Despite a growing appreciation for the importance of student voice, most students don’t feel heard, the authors note. In their article, they define student voice as the practice of involving youth in decision making in schools through distributed leadership.

Opportunities to incorporate student voice can be found within the structures of education (i.e., the setting, focus, and intent) or within relationships (a category encompassing access, representativeness, roles, and responsiveness). Of those, roles and responsiveness are particularly relevant for schools committed to putting shared leadership into action. “(W)e hope this work will push the boundaries of what teachers and school administrators perceive as the potential for student voice to generate more substantive and meaningful actions,” the authors write. “Teachers and school administrators can and should go beyond asking students for feedback on surveys.”

Source: Holquist, S.E., Mitra, D.L., Conner, J., & Wright, N.L. (2023). What is student voice anyway? The intersection of student voice practices and shared leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 59 (4), 703-743.

Student voice and political engagements

Youth who are given the opportunity to develop their voice in high school are more likely to plan to vote, according to research from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. A recent study showed that 81% of students surveyed who remembered “student voice experiences” in high school said they were “extremely likely” to vote in 2024, compared with 44% of students without those experiences. Overall, less than half of all those surveyed recalled high school experiences where their input was encouraged, with Black and Asian students less likely than their peers to have felt their voice was valued in high school.

Source: Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. (2024, March). Youth who develop their voice in high school are more likely to vote.

A new structure for student government

Too often, student leadership positions are tokenized, viewed as training for the future, or focused on artificial leadership simulations, according to a 2022 article published in Research in Educational Administration & Leadership. That’s a shame, writes researcher Justin Patrick, because student government can and should be much more. Structural changes could help address the issue. Patrick argues that student government should be professionalized, with “its own jurisdiction and inherently political structure.” “Students are not just leaders of tomorrow; they are also unavoidably leaders of today,” Patrick writes. “Their structures need to support them as such.”

Source: Patrick, J. (2022, March). Student leadership and student government. Research in Educational Administration & Leadership, 7 (1), 1-37.

Action-oriented engagement

A review of literature spanning 1995 to 2020 showed that only 1,290 educational research articles were published that included teacher or student voice. Of those, only 61 articles included both groups, and only 14 articles engaged with participants in a meaningful way. “The fact that in analysis of 25 years of academic publications, there are few school-focused education articles that seek both teacher and student voices, and position participants in at least a consultative role, is concerning,” the researchers note. “Also of concern is that only a third of these publications explicitly articulate actions resulting from the views expressed from participants.” To move the field forward, they say, a wider conversation is needed about how scholarship can act as an avenue for students and teachers to influence change in their schools.

Source: Gillett-Swan, J. & Baroutsis, A. (2023, October). Student voice and teacher voice in educational research: A systematic review of 25 years of literature from 1995-2020. Oxford Review of Education.

This article appears in the May 2024 issue of Kappan, Vol. 105, No. 8, pp. 5-6.