Making children’s and students’ voices heard
Schools have a key role in upholding this principle. At the same time, students need to be aware of both their rights and responsibilities.
Learning about human rights and democracy is a fundamental first step for becoming an informed and responsible citizen.
Students also need to participate in activities such as debating and community work. Skills, knowledge and critical understanding must be coupled with the attitudes and values that form part of a democratic culture. All this should be promoted through a whole-school approach.
Facts & figures
While students make up approximately 92% of any given school’s population, the decisions in school are routinely made by the remaining 8% who are adults.[1]
Students learn better when they are engaged partners throughout the educational process.[2]
What is student voice?
Student voice is the right of students to have a say in matters that affect them in their schools, and to have their views and opinions taken seriously. It encompasses all aspects of school life and decision-making where young learners are able to make a meaningful contribution, adapted to their age and stage of development. It stretches from informal situations in which students express an opinion to their peers or staff members to participation in democratic structures or mechanisms, such as student parliaments and consultations.
Student voice can vary from simple self-expression to taking on a leadership role in an aspect of school life. It can be characterised according to a 6-fold typology of increasing complexity and responsibility:
- Expression – voice an opinion
- Consultation – asked for an opinion
- Participation – attend and preferably play an active role in a meeting
- Partnership – have a formal role in decision-making
- Activism – identify a problem, propose a solution, and advocate its adoption
- Leadership – plan and make decisions
Given that the relevant activities are age-appropriate, student voice can be expressed anywhere in the school community, in and out of lessons, e.g., through inviting students to comment on teaching approaches and techniques, suggest topics for class discussion, participate in school policy committees and/or consultations, or just join in a casual conversation on school matters with a teacher or other staff member in their free time.
Why is student voice important at school?
Student voice is rooted in the concept of children’s rights and human rights. In particular, Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) establishes the right of every child to have a say in matters which affect them, whether in or out of school, as well as to be involved in decisions that affect them. More generally, the UNCRC includes other articles that seek to increase students’ voice, including the right to seek and receive information, to express their own views and to associate with others.
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Article 12
“Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”[3]
Student voice can have many benefits both for schools and the wider society – for example:
- Participation in school decision-making fosters a sense of citizenship in young learners, helping them to develop important competences, e.g. co-operation and communication skills, self-efficacy, responsibility, civic-mindedness and respect for the value of democracy – all of which lie at the heart of the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC).
- Contributing to their school community gives young learners a sense of belonging, develops self-esteem and can lead to more respectful relationships. This has a positive influence on school discipline and helps to reduce the incidence of problems such as drop-out, bullying, substance abuse and radicalisation.
- Engaging students in active learning activities in class has a positive effect not only on the classroom atmosphere, but also on the educational achievements of students and their peers.
What are the challenges?
There are a number of major areas of challenge facing the development of student voice in schools.
The first relates to the attitudes of other school stakeholders. Parents, teachers school leaders and others who have traditional views of schooling sometimes feel that children and young people should be ‘seen and not heard’ in school. They think respect for others and for authority are best developed in a culture of deference. To counteract attitudes of this kind school leaders need to introduce elements of student voice gradually, explaining the process clearly to school stakeholders and sharing the successes with them when they take place.
Some stakeholders may see empowering young learners through student voice as undermining their own power or position of authority in the school. Teachers may sometimes feel that students have more rights than they have. This merely underlines the importance of developing a whole-school culture in which all stakeholders feel safe to express their opinions freely and openly, and to have their opinions taken seriously. Student voice goes hand in hand, therefore, with the creation of a general culture of democracy and human rights in school.
The second major area of challenge is ensuring that student participation is genuine participation and not tokenism or ‘window-dressing’. This means giving students opportunities to make a real difference to their lives and the lives of other school stakeholders, and helping staff to be more open to sharing their decision-making with young learners.
The Ladder of Children’s Participation
Roger Hart, in the book Children's Participation: The Theory And Practice Of Involving Young Citizens In Community Development And Environmental Care, developed the concept of a ‘ladder of participation’ which can be applied to student voice. He suggested eight different levels or degrees of student voice, from the simplest - which is little more than the manipulation of students for the school’s benefit - to activities where decision-making is genuinely shared between adults and young learners.
A third area of challenge is the difficulty of making opportunities for student voice equally open to all students. The problem arises to some extent on account of the perception that student voice applies only to formal school structures, like pupil parliaments. For stakeholders with more traditional attitudes towards teaching and learning it can be difficult to see student voice as integral to, rather than separate from the learning process in classrooms. Another aspect of this problem is that it is the more confident and out-going students who are prepared to voice their opinions openly or stand in class or school council elections. How to integrate student voice into learning and to involve a wider range of students in the process is a whole-school responsibility and needs to be taken seriously as an area of whole-school planning and as an important topic for teacher professional development.
How can schools get active?
There are a number of ways in which schools can develop more opportunities for student voice. These include:
- Encouraging teaching staff to consider how they can involve students in the learning process in the classroom, e.g., by creating more opportunities for students to express their own opinions, debate issues, make suggestions or draw up classroom rules;
- Creating mechanisms for student consultation on issues affecting school life, e.g., through questionnaires, suggestion boxes, surveys or focus groups;
- Establishing formal bodies or procedures, e.g., pupil parliaments, student committees and commissions, or ‘circle time’;
- Inviting students to sit on school policy-development committees, e.g., on gender equality, pupil safety or health and well-being;
- Teaching young learners the skills of public speaking and debate, e.g., discussion skills, active listening or argumentation;
- Providing opportunities for peer-led activities, e.g., peer education, peer assessment or peer counselling.
[1] https://soundout.org/why-student-voice-a-research-summary/
[2] https://soundout.org/why-student-voice-a-research-summary/ ; Beaudoin, N. (2005). Elevating student voice: How to enhance participation, citizenship, and leadership. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education
[3] UN General Assembly, Convention on the Rights of the Child, 20 November 1989, United Nations
Resources on Making children’s and students’ voices heard
Multimedia
Official texts
Policy documents
Studies
Higher education for democratic innovation (Council of Europe Higher Education Series No. 21) (2016)
Tools
Related schools projects
Address: Escola Básica Integrada de Ribeira Grande
Country: Portugal
Project: To Involve Project
Working language during the project:
- Portuguese
Themes of the Council of Europe project “FREE to SPEAK, SAFE to LEARN - Democratic Schools for All” covered:
- Making children’s and students’ voices heard
- Improving well-being at school
Competences from the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) addressed and where / how they were integrated:
- Empathy
Promote debate after story telling that focusses on the recognition and appreciation of the motives, behaviors, desires and feelings of others.
Heighten empathy through practical, multisensory activities such as drawing, drama, and role play to complement the story telling.
Spark mindfulness activities that allow students to become more attentive and aware of their present thoughts, emotions and behaviour. The resulting focused attention and enhanced awareness facilitate students’ self-regulation and positive emotions such as happiness and optimism, as well as empathy, perspective taking and prosocial behaviour. - Co-operating Skills
Role-playing games that develop skills ranging from the ability to take turns and sharing to cooperation and teambuilding.
Games that appeal to teamwork. - Conflict-Resolution Skills
Games that promote assertive communication.
Debate alternative ways to resolve conflict based on stories with subsequent application and generalization to actual struggles in children's lives.
Target group age range:
- 5 - 11
Level of education:
- Primary education
Short description of the project:
The To Involve Project, created in 2016, intends to promote development of socio-emotional competences, via mobilization and engagement of all educational elements, following a Whole School Approach (WSA). WSA consists of an approach based on establishing networks that integrate policies and practices pertaining to school organizational culture, opportunities cultivated in the classroom and by the curriculum, as well as partnerships fostered with educational community entities. To Involve Project calls on collaborative work involving all concerned: teaching and non-teaching staff, students, parents and families, community agents, among others.
The project was successfully approved in July 2018 by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to function as Gulbenkian Academy of Knowledge. As Gulbenkian Academy of Knowledge, the project benefited from financial support and backing in the evaluation and monitoring process. Our methodology is supported by a theoretical framework developed from the typology of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs. SEL programs lead to positive effects on targeted socio-emotional skills, along with attitudes about oneself, others and the school. The methodology consists of inclusive and universal intervention, aimed at all children in the classroom, yet with activities incorporating diversity, particularly the most vulnerable children.
As a Gulbenkian Academy of Knowledge, the project integrated experimental strategies capable of serving as a future reference for projects that create contexts to promote the development and evaluation of social and emotional skills.
In order to promote socio-emotional competences among children, teachers and technical staff have received accredited training (25h) to implement the European Resilience Curriculum (RESCUR) in the classroom context. The RESCUR sessions are implemented biweekly and have a duration of 90 minutes. To prevent burnout, to promote resilience and SEL in students, teachers have attended Systemic Coaching sessions and technical staff have received training in this area. Simultaneously, with the aim of promoting positive parenting, parental engagement and collaboration in the development of SEL in children, parents/caregivers have been invited by teachers to get involved with children in the classroom in SEL activities. They have also been invited to perform RESCUR home activities and to participate biweekly in family interaction groups for eight sessions.
Aims/objectives
Our main goal is to improve mental health and educational success in 199 children aged 3 to 12 years old through SEL.
To achieve the main goal, we set 4 intermediate goals:
- 1) Teacher Training in the European Resilience Curriculum (RESCUR);
- 2) Implementation of sessions for students, which allowed the development of communication skills, problem solving and emotional regulation in 199 children (preschool and elementary school);
- 3) Promotion of positive parenting, parental involvement and collaboration in the development of socio-emotional skills in children; and
- 4) Social and emotional skills training for non-teaching staff
Expected results/outcomes
We expected the following results for each of the intervention targets:
- a) Students: acquire communication skills (effective listening, understanding others, communicating ideas effectively and assertive conflict resolution); acquire problem solving skills (define a problem and find solutions, evaluate these solutions and make a decision, as well as apply this process in daily routine); acquire managing and regulating emotions skills (identify, recognize and express basic emotions, interpret one’s
- own underlying emotional and motivational states as well as those of others, and regulation of emotions).
- b) Teachers: voluntary adherence to the project, participate actively and increasingly autonomously in the advancement of social and emotional skills in the school context.
- c) Parents/caregivers: parents' adherence to implement the activities sent home, greater proximity to the school context; acquisition of positive parenting competencies.
Changes
To measure student´s evolution throughout the school year, we surveyed teaching staff using a five-point Lickert Scale.
Regarding the development of Communication Skills, specifically Effective Communication, there was a high perception of change due to the ability to listen effectively (55%) and to understand the emotions in communication (60%). In relation to the ability to communicate ideas, cooperate and negotiate this change stood at 44%.
For assertiveness, the results point to a high change perception of 54.7%.
Under Problem Solving skills, in Preschool there is a high evolution in all items evaluated, namely the ability to define the problem and think of creative solutions (52.5%), to evaluate solutions and make a decision (50.9%) and to apply problem solving in practice (52.7%). In turn, in primary education the evolution in all items included is reasonable, namely 62.5% in the ability to define the problem and think of creative solutions, 49.3% to evaluate solutions and make a decision, and finally 63.9% to apply problem solving in practice. These results support the relevance of promoting these skills at an early age, demonstrating that it is possible to develop skills such as Problem Solving in children from 3 to 5 years old, using products and dynamics appropriate to the age group.
Under the Emotional Regulation skill, educators and teachers perceive a high evolution in the ability to identify and recognize the different basic emotions (75%), in the ability to express basic emotions (61%). In their ability to identify strategies for managing emotions, the perception of high evolution was 53%.
Educators / teachers, mainly responsible for the implementation of the sessions with the students, proved to be important promoters of the skills contemplated, having regularly encouraged their students to reflect and monitor their own learning, created the conditions for the practice of these skills and their integration in other curricular areas.
The goal of increasing the involvement of parents / caregivers in the promotion of children's socio-emotional skills was achieved, with a significant increase in their participation throughout the school year, with an average participation rate of 44% in the first actions, increasing to 78% in subsequent actions.
The results of the qualitative evaluation (focus group) demonstrate that in the perception of parents / caregivers the To Involve Project provided positive impacts not only on the school-family relationship and the student-family relationship, but also on themselves, as they consider sessions a learning opportunity and a source of emotional support.
The teachers also perceived impacts of the To Involve Project at multiple levels, namely in the school-family relationship, reporting greater parental involvement in the school context, establishing relationships characterized by greater respect between teachers and caregivers, and remark the recognition by caregivers of the important role of educators and teachers in their children's lives. In addition, teaching staff also emphasize the practice of mindfulness and the topics addressed as useful and beneficial tools in the management of their class groups.
Challenges you faced
Although the teachers are strongly encouraged to embed the social and emotional competencies into daily classroom activities, in a structured way, so as to facilitate generalization and internalization, they find it difficult to do so without the support of the technical team (psychologists).
Supervisory work with teachers has been essential to ensure that they are able to strengthen the relationships with colleagues, students and parents, and sustain their own motivation, sense of efficacy and engagement.
Time-frame of the project:
2016- ongoing
Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:
European curriculum for resilience promotion (RESCUR), a resilience curriculum for early years and primary schools in Europe. RESCUR was designed as a universal and inclusive program to promote resilience related competences in children from 4 to 12 years old, giving, nevertheless, a special attention to vulnerable groups such as children with disabilities, special educational needs, children from minorities and refugees.
