Search results

This paper aims to illustrate, by means of a content analysis of 278 weekly School Meeting minutes, the ways in which student voice is actualized in one democratic free school in Germany.

This paper uses a qualitative content analysis methodology of 278 weekly School Meetings minutes.

This paper uses Fielding’s (2012) patterns of partnership typology to illustrate what counts as student voice and participation in a democratic free school.

Limitations included being reliant on translations of German texts, some missing minutes from the entire set, the lack of a single author for the minutes (and thus degree of detail differs) and the fact that the School Meeting minutes make reference to other meetings for various sub-committees for which no minutes exist, and thus, findings on the degree of student voice may be limited. And because this is a study of one school, generalizability may be difficult. Future research into these sub-committee meetings would prove helpful as well as content analyses of other democratic free schools’ meeting minutes.

This study can help people more deeply understand what goes on in democratic free schools and what student voice and participation can mean within this context.

This study aims to explore three methods of soliciting student-to-teacher feedback in a tenth-grade English classroom.

The foundational inquiry asks what type of instructions – sentence stems, open-response or directed-response – yields the most honest and actionable responses when soliciting feedback. The data were coded for the presence and quality of constructive feedback and rationales, and their content was examined for classroom implications relating to the inclusion of student voice writ large.

The three sets of anonymous responses, each prompted by one of the types of instructions named above, suggested four trends irrespective of solicitation style: students were unlikely to critique their teacher; students seldom provided a rationale for their comments; students often spoke more about the personal rather than academic nature of their experiences; and students often addressed the class environment and the class collective as integral to their learning experiences.

These trends encouraged six considerations in the practice of including student voice in the author’s own classroom and beyond: we must validate student critique, co-define concepts that are central to effective feedback, time invitations thoughtfully, create a constant feedback loop rather than isolated collections, invite feedback practices that are collaborative among students and let go of singular notions of student voice.

We describe a holistic approach to promoting school safety that merges an emphasis on student voice with staff training in restorative practices. We first describe current approaches to keeping schools safe based on the existing research literature. Given that most of these approaches rely on access to credible information about potential threats to school safety, we then discuss student voices as one critical source of information, especially at the middle and high school level. We report on a recently developed tool designed to encourage students to share threats to school safety they are aware of with adults. Initial testing identified potential barriers and facilitators to students' willingness to share information. We discuss teacher training in restorative practices as one approach that might address some of these barriers, including anti-snitching cultures in schools, students' lack of trust in adult responses to student-identified concerns, and punitive school climates. Based on recent work, we identify barriers and facilitators to implementing restorative practices in schools. We provide recommendations about potential strategies to merge student voice with school personnel's training in restorative practices to minimize peer victimization that can escalate into violent behavior.

This paper aims to explore how one elementary school administrative team responded to their changing student populations to include Latin(x) within their black community. The responses included looping practices, relationship building with families and culturally relevant pedagogies. In particular, this paper considers how the three aspects of the change worked together toward the goal of providing its students with quality educational opportunities and enhancements.

The research presented here is part of a longitudinal (four-year) qualitative study where ethnographic approaches to data collection were adopted.

The four-year immersion in the values of culturally relevant pedagogy created a reciprocal growth in understanding among the teachers and the students of the black and Latin(x) populations, sustained the overarching ideas of deep family connections and contributed to asset-driven curriculum.

A national trend shows rapid changing demographics where Latin(x) families are moving into black neighborhoods and schools. This change in schools’ student populations finds educators facing new challenges in addressing the educational and cultural needs of two minoritized populations. This research adds to the existing scholarship by documenting how one school shifts their learning atmosphere to deeply engage students in culturally relevant pedagogies.

The authors of this study examined how four leadership teams participating in a year-long deeper learning leadership academy understood and adapted key practices for change leadership, deeper learning and equity in their PK-12 schools.

This multiple-site case study used interviews, observations and documents to investigate how four school leadership teams developed deeper learning initiatives in their schools.

This study highlights how participants recast the leadership academy’s three pillars (change leadership, deeper learning and equity) as they engaged in educational reform for ambitious teaching and learning in their own contexts. Three themes emerged: transforming the culture, teaching the whole child and restructuring for collaboration. Overall, the authors found that district leaders must be fully committed to deeper learning for the culture to truly be transformed in schools under their purview.

This article contributes to the literature on supporting school leaders to enact equity-centered deeper learning initiatives using robust professional development. It is useful for understanding key deeper learning strategies and designing future training.

This chapter focusses on the research methodology of the completed project, drawing on what Martin (2008) described as ‘Indigenist’ research traditions or practices. The project drew upon tenets of critical race theory which developed over the life of a university teaching and learning project to support the praxis of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, or Indigenous,1 pre-service teachers on their final internships prior to graduating.

The broader project was conceptualised and framed within our prioritisation of Indigenist standpoint and critical race theory. Our project was designed to amplify the perspectives and voices of Indigenous students in situations where White, hegemonic relations appeared to constrain their potential achievement on practicum in socially unjust and often racist ways. Research into the achievement and success of Indigenous education graduates in Australia is dominated by non-Indigenous reporting, framed in deficit language of Indigenous ‘underachievement’, ‘barriers’, ‘lack’, and ‘disengagement’, rather than from their experience of injustice in their professional preparation as teachers.

The research design troubled how researchers like us ‘come to know’ Indigenous achievement in the higher education sector through the pre-service teachers’ words, impelling us to listen to stories of discrimination, rather than to official accounts of how they ‘failed’ to measure up to teacher standards. The attention to detail in the multi-site, micro-level practices in teacher education and the ways these unfold in situ for Indigenous students would not be possible without the Indigenist research methodology developed in partnership with Indigenous research colleagues and student co-researchers.

This chapter then serves to remind educational researchers that research is a practice and has practice architectures with particular hegemonic arrangements which have not transpired to serve the interests of Indigenous peoples. Honouring Indigenist standpoint and employing critical race theory in research design thus means paying particular and careful attention to the work that research practices do, on, to, and with communities, not normative (colonial) crafting of the praxis research problem.

Indigenous students that live in poverty experience contextual socio-economic factors with residual effects of lower educational outcomes than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Indigenous children that live in poverty often have fewer resources, are segregated, and continue to be marginalized in the classroom. The vicious cycle of low education levels for Indigenous peoples confines them to low paying employment or unemployment that results in ongoing poverty or being a statistic categorized as the working poor. The purpose of this research was to gain a better understanding of the strategies that teachers have animated in their classrooms, which they perceived to be successful in encouraging Indigenous students to attend school, remain in school, complete course credits, and persevere to graduate from high school. The intent was to discover the how-to strategies and advance working knowledge of pedagogical practices leading to improved educational experiences and achievement levels for Indigenous students. This chapter will present the observations and qualitative findings of the case studies conducted in New Zealand and Canada, wherein 14 teachers described what they did and what it looked like in their classrooms. A constructivist approach was utilized to make meaning and gain the interpretations from the participants. This was achieved by first viewing the interactions in the classrooms and, through the interview process, being able to garner a better understanding of what was witnessed from the point of view of the participants.

Our goals were to explore the pedagogies applied by instructors that supported Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) student learning in a leadership course and the leadership behaviors BIPOC students identified as being applicable after the course.

Through survey research and qualitative data analysis, three prominent themes emerged.

High-quality, purposeful pedagogy created opportunities for students to learn. Second, a supportive, interactive community engaged students with the instructor, each other and the course material to support participation in learning. As a result, students reported experiencing big shifts, new growth and increased confidence during their leadership courses.

We discuss our findings and offer specific recommendations for leadership educators to better support BIPOC students in their leadership courses and classrooms and for further research with BIPOC students.

The purpose of this study is to examine effects of classroom-level and student-level factors on student engagement in the context of a higher education system vertically differentiated into research, applied and comprehensive university types.

The study used a cross-sectional multilevel design to explain student engagement based on class and student variables. Specifically, the study collects data from 656 students and 61 randomly selected teachers at both levels and uses multilevel modeling to explain relationship patterns.

The results show that institutions vary significantly in student engagement scores. In addition, while a significant variation is found at the student and classroom level, the effects of academic achievement, instructional quality, teaching experience and teacher qualifications on student engagement vary across classrooms in institutions. However, the interaction effect of classroom and student-level variables on student engagement remains non-significant.

The main contribution of this lies in the explanation of student engagement using classroom and student level factors in a vertically differentiated higher education system using multilevel modeling. Student engagement varied in classrooms research universities applied and comprehensive universities.