Authorizing Students’ Perspectives: Toward Trust, Dialogue, and Change in Education

“…definition of social justice is that all students have the right not only to learn (Brown, 2002; Darling-Hammond, 1997) but also to have a say in how their education is conceptualized and enacted (Cook-Sather, 2006c, 2002a, 2002b; John, 1996; Pollard, Thiessen, & Filer, 1997; Rudduck, forthcoming).”

“Cook-Sather (2002) claims that listening to student voices and paying attention to their suggestions when making decisions about education runs counter to political trends in education (she refers to the US context).”

“Instead, listening should be linked to action and sincere intentions to respond to or at least negotiate based on what is heard (Cook-Sather, 2002, 2007 ; Schultz, 2003 ).”

“…of listening to students as learners in order to discover how they interpret their learning experiences in order to empower classroom processes (Cook-Sather, 2002; Mitra, 2004; Oldfather, 1995), this study explores students’ views on learning with information-rich tasks in a…”

“In developing our ideas we have also drawn on the work of other scholars, such as Corbett and Wilson (1995), Erickson and Shultz (1992), Fielding (2001), Cook-Sather (2002) , Rudduck and Flutter (2000), and Thomson and Holdsworth (2003).”

“The student voice movement has, however, gained a foothold in primary and secondary education (Cook-Sather 2002; Fine et al. 2007).”

“This point has been acknowledged by other researchers who have investigated young people’s participation in research (Alderson 2001, Cook-Sather 2002, Kellett et al. 2004, Nieuwenhuys 2004, Mannion 2007).”

“…to consider their own learning and, in so doing, develop their own thinking about how they learn, has also been seen to make students ‘inclined to take more responsibility for their education because it is no longer something being done to them but something they do’ (Cook-Sather, 2002, p. 10).”

“Second, increases in sense of control (Seifert and O’Keefe 2001), sense of agency, belonging, and competencies (Mitra 2004), as well as a better understanding of the teacher’s work and perspective (Cook-Sather 2002) can lead to increased engagement and a smaller distance to the teacher’s view on instruction.”

“…and feelings; (c) practice empathy and solidarity; (d) plan for personal and social transformative actions that promote well-being (Bigelow, 1990; Cook-Sather, 2002; FernándezBalboa, 2002); and (e) open up alternative voices and discourses, including “languages of critique” and “languages of…”

“While there are of course important recent exceptions, (e.g. Mee, 1997; Powell, 1997; Shultz and Cook-Sather, 2001), student voice is largely missing from this important discussion.”

“Walking in the footsteps of theorists including Dewey and Freire, some scholars advocated for listening to ‘student voice’ (Cook-Sather, 2002; Werder & Otis, 2010) because ‘students need to be part of the discussion about learning’ (Huber & Hutchings, 2005, p. 113).”

“Taking the advice of urban education scholars to be more intentional about the practice of including students’ voices in education reform efforts (Cook-Sather, 2002; Fine, Torre, Burns, & Payne, 2007; Mitra, 2007; Noguera, 2007), we proposed to invite high school-aged youth from several of the…”

“This allowed the teachers to not only ‘re-tune their ears’ so they could hear what the girls were saying, but to also re-direct their actions in response to the girls (Cook-Sather, 2002). Other research (see, e.g. Enright and O’Sullivan (2013), Fisette (2013), Oliver et al.”

“The focus of the project was on the students’ voices, underrepresented in much of our scholarship (Cook-Sather, 2002; Dahl, 1995; Fielding, 2001; Fine, Weis, & Powell, 1997; Lincoln, 1995; Mitra, 2004; Raymond, 2001; Rubin & Silva, 2003; Shultz & Cook-Sather, 2001; Wasley, Hampel, & Clark, 1997),…”

“…2003; Rudduck & Flutter, 2004), observations (Rudduck & Flutter, 2000), issues and conditions (Fielding, 2001a, 2001b; 2004), and challenges (Cook-Sather, 2002a), together they seek to illuminate aspects critical to effective involvement of students in research on teaching and/or schooling…”

“…schools go about designing the curricula of the future, they must remain mindful of the fact that ‘we do not know more than students living [in the 21 st century] about what it means to be a student in the modern world and what it might mean to be an adult in the future’ (Cook-Sather, 2002: 12).”

“to participate constructively in their education because not only are their voices sought, but they are responded to (Cook-Sather, 2002).”

“Participants can interact in different ways during a research process, for example, creating empirical data or assisting with its analysis (Cook-Sather, 2002; Morrow and Richards, 1996).”

“This project brought high school students into direct dialogue with preservice teachers working toward certification (see Cook-Sather, 2001a, 2001b; 2002a, 2002b; Cook-Sather & Reisinger, 2001).”

“Flagging these impairment issues early may minimise the impact on future practice [19].”

“To explore these ideas further, this research authorizes the voices of high school adolescent youth (Cook-Sather, 2002) to understand from them how student–teacher dyadic relationships can be improved within the teaching and learning process.”

“…it is still possible for literacy educators to work toward building curriculum that authorises students’ perspectives on the world around them (see also Cook-Sather, 2002) and what Greene (1995) calls “spaces of excellence where diverse persons are moved to reach towards the possible” (p. 184).”

“They have argued that student voice should be viewed as a significant dimension of a healthy school and classroom culture and that attending to student voice can support academic outcomes and broader school improvement (Benner et al. 2019; Cook-Sather 2002; Fullan 2015;Mitra 2009).”

“We situate ourselves in the fi eld of “ student voice ” work, building on its development since the 1990 ’ s (Cook-Sather, 2002; Rudduck & Flutter, 2000).”

“The idea that educational reform cannot succeed without greater direct involvement of students in all its facets was also emphasized by Cook-Sather (2002), who recommends attending to the perspectives of those most directly affected by, but least often consulted about, educational policy and practice.”

“…previous notions that children cannot provide reliable information (Dockett & Perry, 2003) invites an opportunity for children to provide the “missing perspectives” (Cook-Sather, 2002, p. 3) and challenges an apparent cultural reluctance to take children’s ideas seriously (Morrow, 2005, p. 153).”

“A central precept in constructivist classrooms is that a student is both author and architect of knowledge, rather than being a passive receptacle for the knowledge of others (Cook-Sather, 2002).”

“that authorizing pupils’ perspectives can directly improve educational practices (e.g. Dahl 1995; Cook-Sather 2002) and I no longer need to prove that listening to pupils and taking them into the process of improving classroom practices benefits their learning.”

“…USA Email: hnbeattie@gmail.com structures in our minds that have rendered us disinclined to elicit and attend to students’ voices and b) changing the structures in educational relationships and institutions that have supported and been supported by this disinclination’ (Cook-Sather, 2002: 4).”

“One might also ask where the students themselves are in the SI literature? One of the heartening developments in education research is the resurgence of interest in what is often called student voice (Cook-Sather, 2002).”

“Students, the alleged raison d’etre for our schools, seem nonentities in an institution that shows little interest in their intellectual or emotional well-being (Cook-Sather, 2002; Corbett & Wilson, 1995; Hemmings, 2000; Johnson, Duffett, Farkas, & Collins, 2003).”

“…voices and perspectives as the foundation on which to build understandings of how urban schools function and how they can be improved focuses on efforts to proactively build opportunities for students to share their views and ideas (Cook-Sather, 2002; Marquez-Zenkov, 2007; Rubin & Silva, 2003).”

“…2004; Rudduck & Flutter, 2004); students teaching other students (e.g., peer tutoring) (Ellis, SmallMcGinley, & De Fabrizio, 2001; Morrison, Everton, & Rudduck, 2000); and students teaching beginning and experienced teachers (Cook-Sather, 2002b; Cooper & Highland, 2000; Hull, 1985; Thiessen, 1992).”

“Cook-Sather (2002, 10) has suggested that through listening to students in the ways identified above, ‘students feel more engaged but are also more inclined to take responsibility for their education [as] it is no longer something being done to them but rather something they do’.”

“I acknowledge the support from my other institutional affiliations as: Visiting Professor, Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, University of Waikato, New Zealand; Adjunct Graduate Professor, College of Education, Texas State University-San Marcos, USA and Adjunct Professor, Charles Darwin University, Austr…”

“At the end of the semester, the preservice teachers draw on their e-mail exchange, course readings, and these transcripts to write formal analyses of what they have learned from participating in this project (see Cook-Sather, 2002a, 2002b, for other discussions of this project).”

“Authors such as Bragg (2001), Cook-Sather (2006), Fielding (2006) and Rodriguez and Brown (2009) raise the question of which student voices are ‘authorized’ (Cook-Sather 2002, 3) to speak, who is excluded, who speaks for whom, and about what.”

“We recommend more research into understanding student perspectives as guidance for refining how concept maps are integrated into courses to reflect students' preferences (Cook-Sather, 2002).”

“…requires ‘major shifts on the part of teachers, students, and researchers in relationships and in ways of thinking and feeling about the issues of knowledge, language, power, and self’ (Oldfather, 1995: 87, see also; Cook-Sather, 2002, 2006b, 2009; Fielding, 1999, 2004; Rudduck, 2002, 2007).”

“Youth–adult partnerships also can improve teacher training (Donohue, Bower, & Rosenberg, 2003; Youens & Hall, 2006), including having preservice teachers shadow students and work with them on collaborative projects (Cook-Sather, 2002, 2006).”

“In addition, student perceptions re fl ect the perspective of the target group (Kane & Staiger, 2012; Quaglia & Corso, 2017) and thereby promote student voice (Cook-Sather, 2002, 2007): the voice of students in their education (Lincoln, 1995).”

“We attempted to create an educational context to authorize student perspectives, which meant that we needed to ‘re-tune our ears so that we can hear what they say, and redirecting our actions in response to what we hear’ (Cook-Sather, 2002, p. 4).”

“Other researchers argue that students should play an active role in determining the learning environment (Levin 2000, Cook-Sather 2002), and that youth involvement in school reform is consistent with democratic notions of representation and participation (Checkoway and Richards-Schuster…”

“Cook-Sather (2002) emphasised how the new media have become progressively more complex.”

“However, Cook-Sather (2002) urges educators to reconfigure power dynamics and discourse practices within existing realms of conversation about education, and to embrace the political potential of children in speaking out on their own behalf both in the critique and in the reform of education.”

“Nevertheless, we could not see exactly how our identities as experienced researchers and our locations as members of staff did intersect to construct a different kind of authority which students may not have expected (Cook-Sather 2002).”

“Participants can interact in different ways during the research process, whether by creating empirical data or assisting with its analysis (Cook-Sather, 2002; Morrow & Richards, 1996).”

“The cartoon provided an accessible ‘valued space’ (Cook-Sather 2002), which supported all ages in engaging with something quite abstract and difficult to talk about: their learning.”

“Cook-Sather (2006) describes student voice as having a legitimate perspective, presence and active role.”

“And as with critical pedagogy, there are both philosophical (or moral) and pragmatic reasons to attend to student voice (Cook-Sather, 2002).”

“While Cook-Sather (2002) urges educators to embrace the capacities of children to speak on their own behalf and contribute to the critical conversations around educational enhancement, this is not yet commonplace in schools and therefore limits the space for Voice-Inclusive Practice.”

“…informational surveys, improving lunches, and service projects that authorize student perspectives without challenging existing school policies (Cook-Sather 2002, Fullan 2007; Holdsworth 2000; Levin 2000; Mitra 2004, 2005; Nieto 1994; Oyler 1996; Pekrul and Levin 2007; Serriere, Mitra, and…”

“Create spaces for faculty learning that are not part of the administration or any particular department (Cook-Sather & McCormack, 2010). Liminal spaces open up possibilities that likely remain closed off when community participants stay in their accustomed locations (Cook-Sather & Alter, 2010). Finally, do not link fa…”

“Educational environments should exist as places that nurture and celebrate student individuality as preparation for a lifetime of learning and existing cooperatively in a complex society (Cook-Sather, 2002; Freire, 1970) and provide opportunities for individual and collective artistic inquiry, experience, and reflecti…”

“Student perspectives can improve educational programming by making curriculum more accessible, creating collaborative processes, empowering students, and motivating them to participate in their education (Cook-Sather, 2002).”

“However, this is a challenge that turns out to be difficult to take up, because traditional views, expectations, roles and patterns of interaction need to change, within an organisational context defined by traditional codes (Cook-Sather 2002).”

“Student perspectives can improve educational programming by making curriculum more accessible, creating collaborative processes, empowering students, and motivating them to participate in their education (Cook-Sather, 2002).”

“Such initiatives have been associated with feelings of ‘trust’ (Cook-Sather, 2002) and ‘respect’ (Baroutsis, Mills, McGregor, Te Riele, &”

“Although it may seem that merely adding 1 day per week for the youth to engage in the sport program was insignificant, what is important to remember when working in activist approaches is that transformation begins at the micro level—small steps toward changing oppressive practices make a difference over time (Cook-Sa…”

“In addition to self-directed learning, Zion also discussed the importance of listening to the perspectives and experiences of youth (see Cook-Sather, 2002).”

“) and providing space for student voice ( Cook-Sather, 2002”

“Great care must be taken when working in relationships of power that inappropriate gathering of material does not influence what gets said and consequently what is written and what is believed (Hattam 1998; Cook-Sather 2002; Edwards 2003).”

“CookSather’s [32] arguments for eliciting the views of young people apply here.”

“Cook-Sather (2002, p. 10) puts it this way: ‘‘When students better understand how teachers work ‐ the complement to teachers better understanding how students work ‐ they can participate more constructively in the educational process.’’”