Empowering student voice in a secondary school: Character Education through project-based learning with students as teachers

ABSTRACT

This project explores ‘meaningful’ student voice development in an evaluation of project-based Character lessons taught by teachers and students. In the context of a secondary school in a deprived urban ward, within a Multi-Academy Trust using value-based instruction, this evaluation is grounded in the notion that student empowerment is essential for student development. Challenging both consultative approaches to student voice and didactic values teaching, this project demonstrates that schools should create freer spaces for students to collaborate and develop their sense of agency. Based on a participatory action research model, the evaluation employs a combination of ‘students as teachers’ and project-based learning approaches. The findings demonstrate that delivering Character lessons in these ways can encourage students to develop their voices through increased engagement and active listening. Moreover, within a wider school culture valuing meaningful student voice development, these approaches to Character lessons hold the potential to empower students and enable them to become more community minded.

KEYWORDS:

• Character education
• student voice
• students as teachers
• project-based learning
• secondary education

Acknowledgments

We would like to extend our thanks to the student teachers, Year 10 teachers and the headteacher as well as Dr Bryan Cunningham.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julia Dobson

Julia Dobson currently teaches History, leads PSHE and is an Acting Head of Year at a secondary school in London. She completed an MA in Leadership (Teach First) at the UCL Institute of Education, in the course of which she conducted this research.

Tom Dobson

Tom Dobson is a Principal Lecturer in the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University. His research focuses on creative approaches to teaching and learning, which includes co-constructing books with children for Story Makers Press.