Last week we had a wonderful webinar led by Dr. Quaglia who was broadcasting from Dubai! Time (and a technology glitch) did not allow for him to address questions that were being asked in the stream, so after some discussion with him I thought we would address them here. Dr. Q will be doing these webinars monthly; check www.qisa.org for specific dates.
What
does voice actually entail?
On page xiv of Student Voice: the Instrument of Change
(Corwin 2014), we define student voice “as occurring when students are
meaningfully engaged in decision making and improvement-related processes in
their schools.” These “processes” range from the classroom right up through
school-wide decisions and even into district level concerns. Student voice for
us is ensuring that students have a seat at the table where meaningful
decisions are made. This goes beyond merely listening to students through
surveys and focus groups (though those are necessary starting points). Student
voice involves students in decision-making. Examples range from providing
student with choices of what to study in the classroom and inviting students to
teach to having students on teacher and administrator hiring teams. What we
seek through student voice is a realization of the idea that students are not a
school’s clients or customers, but rather their partners.
What
are the merits of student voice?
There are many merits of student voice, but let’s start with
the fact that students who report having a voice in school are 7x more likely to
also report being academically motivated. Simply providing students with
agency and a measure of control over their experiences in school has this
dramatic seven-fold effect. If you know something else that has as great or
better effect, do that instead! Regularly when we talk to students in focus
groups having a say in what happens to them—either by getting to select books, helping
make the latest dress code decision, being part of peer mediation or peer
tutoring—is highly motivating to them.
At the classroom level it seems true enough that you can’t
teach someone if you don’t know them. The entire trend toward personalized
education requires student voice. Until students share with us their hopes and dreams,
their background knowledge, a sense of their own learning capacities, it is
difficult to teach in anything other than a one-size-fits-all,
teach-to-the-middle approach. Competency Based Education (CBE) also requires
Student Voice. A full spectrum picture of competency includes not only test
performance, but also strategies like individual task demonstration along the
way and portfolios as summative evaluation of accumulated learning. Both of
these can be considered forms of student voice.
At the school level, students’ unique perspective on school
policies, norms, customs, and practices enable an adult-student partnership to
solve problems and devise new solutions far more readily than an adults-only
approach. Examples of this range from suspension policies that make little
sense to students and actually promote greater ISS over time to concerns about
student tardiness to zero
tolerance homework policies that simply punish rather than teach.
What
does student voice look like in practice?
What does a
genuine partnership look like? If our experience is any indication, it does not
mean one partner always gets their way. In a partnership, there is a genuine
dialogue, a give and take that frequently results in “a third way”—a new idea
that neither partner imagined before the dialogue. A kind of win-win. Questions and challenges are seen as
respectful rather than a defiance of adult authority or problem with student
opinion.
Concretely, a
classroom enlivened by student voice is abuzz with activity. Students are
teaching. Students are electing to be at this or that station. Students are in
small groups discussing. Students are working on projects. They are self
assessing. They are peer assessing. Teachers are facilitating, not simply
delivering instruction. And above all teachers are learning.
At the school
level, students are part of Building Leadership Teams, Teacher Based Teams,
Department Meetings, and “Staff” Meetings (renamed Learning Community
Meetings). There are Parent-Teacher-Student
meetings. Report cards, primarily narrative and performance-based, include
Student Voice and student self-assessment.
For all levels
of putting student voice into practice, available technologies are used as
amplifiers. Teachers, Administrators, and even central office leaders access
student voice regularly through Twitter, Facebook, and other social media
resources.
How
can a teacher get started with adding student voice in a lesson, unit, etc.?
First steps include starting class with questions (what do
you know about this already?), choice within curriculum (should we do this set
of exercises or these others?), greater collaboration within lessons (using a
variety of organizing strategies), and exit slips (what did you think of today’s
learning activity?). To really go for student voice administer iKnowMyClass!
Are
there criteria used to help increase the amount of student voice in a classroom
or building?
A short, not-exhaustive checklist of criteria would include:
- A regular habit of student surveys
that were meaningfully used and followed up with action steps
- A habit of student focus groups
- Regular student choice within the
curriculum
- Student self assessment
- Student feedback and input into
learning environment and experiences
- Students interests drive learning
- Student help develop classroom and
school rules
- Students on staff hiring committees
- Students on administrator hiring
committees
- Students participating in staff
meetings
- Students participating in department
meetings
- Students participating on building
leadership teams
How
can we get teachers to differentiate between student voice and just giving
students' choice?
Student choice is one of many ways of doing student voice.
The latter is a much broader category and is as much a way of being as it is
about technique. As with many of the
practices suggested above, student choice has a role to play, but is by no the
only option. One way to help teachers see the difference is to point out this
distinction and provide other suggestions, besides “choices”, to fill out the
picture. Would you want your significant
other or partner only to give you choices? Or would you rather that your
partnership was one of mutual voice?
How
can we change staff attitudes towards aspirations?
We have talked to literally hundreds of educators in the
course of our work. When we ask questions about core values or professional
missions or why people became educators, nearly everyone says the same thing.
Their answers are always about supporting students’ aspirations and frequently
echo the 8 Conditions and the 3 Guiding Principles. No teacher we have ever
talked to said they became an educator to help a school make AYP every year.
Nor has anyone said their mission as an educator was to raise standardized test
scores as high as possible.
The fact of the matter is we need to return our school staff to the attitudes that brought them and keep
in the profession in the first place. When we set students’ aspirations as the
primary goal of our efforts as a school—and not mere academic outcomes, they
will rejoice! By supporting student aspirations, we are supporting staff
aspirations as well.
What
are some best practices for cultivating and honoring teacher voice?
A great first
step is to have meaningful staff meetings. When a principal chooses to memo the
memo-able to free up time for her staff to have genuine conversations about
their concerns as professional educators working in a particular school, staff
begin to thrive in a much more collegial environment. Administrators also need
to end the practice of asking their staff for input to a decision that has
already been made so that they can check the box “Asked staff.” This practice
rarely fools anyone and is experienced by teachers as an affront. Having said
that, the opportunity to provide meaningful input to decisions that all staff
recognize are the principal’s to make (they don’t want your job) in a culture
of transparency (here is why I made a different decision) is always welcome.
Professional
Development could also benefit from a major overhaul starting with asking
teachers about their learning needs and then working to meet those needs. We
need to stop the pro-forma expectation that a professional educators must do X
hours of PD regardless of their content area or expertise. We have heard far
too often about ELA teachers sitting in on Math PD so that they could “get
their hours.”
Finally, take
the notion of teacher leadership seriously. Teachers are professionals. They
are experts. Administrators do not need to know everything. Enlist teachers in
their areas of expertise. One effective way to do this is to create mentoring
programs as well as relying on internal experts for professional development.
Best practices also include using surveys and focus groups.
To diminish the
fear of going down this road, the administration must develop trust. This can
only be done over time and by action—words count for a lot less. Punitive
practices (e.g., reassignments within a building or to other buildings, or
handing out the short straw when it comes to classroom assignments, etc.) must
be abolished. Even the perception that this is happening (if it is not in fact
happening) must be addressed head on with transparency and clear explanation.
In the positive column,
have lunch with teachers and guide professional conversations. Do not settle for an “Open Door Policy” as
your strategy for listening to your staff. If no one walks through the door (or
only the squeaky wheel does) there is not much to listen to. Rather seek out
teacher input as a regular habit. Create a pattern of teacher voice and design
systems (if they do not already exist) such as the type of staff meeting
referenced above.
How
to make the 8 conditions grounded and applicable to the classroom/instruction?