The possibilities and problematics of student voice for teacher professional learning: lessons from an evaluation study

ABSTRACT

Student voice has the potential to prompt creative and transformative teacher professional learning and practice. However, contemporary conditions of education – including policy priorities and institutional constraints – shape how student voice is taken up. This article draws on data from an evaluation study of a student voice programme (‘Teach the Teacher’) as enacted in two Australian schools. Notwithstanding the possibilities of student voice, reductive interpretations of teacher’s work risk translating student voice into thin practices; the teacher becomes envisioned as technician who needs to fill their ‘toolbox’ and find ‘what works’ by listening to students. Analysing what is said and unsaid about student voice for teacher professional learning in interviews with school leaders and teachers, as well as focus groups with students, this article explores the problematics of mobilising student voice for teacher professional learning. Questions are raised for those seeking to promote reciprocal intergenerational learning in democratic schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Student voice
• teacher professional learning
• teacher professionalism
• reciprocal learning

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which this research was conducted: the Wurundjeri and Wadawurrung people of the Kulin nations, and pay respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We thank the anonymous peer reviewer and the editor for their constructive feedback and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. NAPLAN stands for the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy, first implemented in 2008, which involves full-cohort, annual standardised testing of Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and Numeracy. These tests are undertaken by all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 over three days in May each year.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the VicSRC (funded through the Victorian Department of Education) [N/A].