Sunday, 7 December 2008

Student Voice in Education

Many schools would say they really engage students in their own learning and in influencing the direction of the school. It is certainly harder to do than it sounds. One example I do have is from a Year 3 class at Fendalton School led by teachers Rob Clarke and Claire Howison. Check out Team 18 and explore their podcasts and online learning. This learning is done in real time by the children - an every day part of their life at home as well as school. They co-create material, develop their own resources and give and get feedback (from home as well as school). Look on their blog at the Book Sell Feedback as one example of a googledoc survey to get feedback from colleagues.

It just seems so authentic to me... So I am trying to relate it to a five levels of engagement shown below.


I have adapted this model to meet the education environment. It identifies the difference between merely informing students (doing to) and empowering them to do things for themselves. Under what circumstances can you see that the collaboration and empowering levels would be used and how? Check out the following movie You have a message, undertaken by students in Te Awamutu. Think about their messages and get back to me... or check out some other ideas on Community Engagement.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is a most interesting blog. Student voice in education is a powerful driver to motivate learning. We have found this at Holy Family School in Wanaka, where we use a Democratic model of Curriculum in order to determine what our students study. Children have one vote each and the teacher has one vote. This is a model of power sharing at its best and comes from the research of James Beane. We have found it brilliant and it has revolutionised the way our teachers teach. It can be scarey for teachers not to know what the class is going to be studying but it soon unfolds and children are far more motivated!! Why don't you try it???