What contemporary work are student ratings actually doing in higher education?

It is conventionally assumed that student ratings perform a significant function in driving improvement in pedagogical practices in higher education. As a result, this form of evaluation has gradually become institutionalised in recent decades as an essential proxy for understanding teaching and course quality in universities across the world. However, with the rise of market-based models in higher education and heightened expectations for accountability mechanisms, the role and functional purpose of ratings-based student evaluation have become increasingly confused. This rising ambiguity has created strong tensions between the seminal drive of student ratings as a tool of quality improvement, and the emerging demands for its use as a transparent accountability measure for the comparative assessment of academic performativity. So are student ratings now largely a tool of quality assurance or performance measurement, or do they remain a legitimate tool for pedagogical improvement? This paper reports on a study that responded to this critical question by considering the contemporary work of student ratings in a major Australian university. The outcomes of this research demonstrate that tension between improvement and accountability motives is causing considerable confusion and discord around the role and value of the student voice. It also reveals that academics are tending to discount the often critical insights of students on the implications of their pedagogical practices as a result of the elevating institutional role of student ratings as a proxy for teaching quality. In considering these outcomes, rising levels of academic dissonance around student ratings would suggest a necessity to consider broadened evaluative strategies that are able to more effectively capture the improvement potential offered by the student voice.     

From ‘consulting pupils’ to ‘pupils as researchers’: a situated case narrative

Schools in England are now being encouraged to ‘personalise’ the curriculum and to consult students about teaching and learning. This article reports on an evaluation of one high school which is working hard to increase student subject choice, introduce integrated curriculum in the middle years and to improve teaching and learning while maintaining a commitment to inclusive and equitable comprehensive education. The authors worked with a small group of students as consultants to develop a ‘student's‐eye’ set of evaluative categories in a school‐wide student survey. They also conducted teacher, student and governor interviews, lesson and meeting observations, and student ‘mind‐mapping’ exercises. In this article, in the light of the findings, the authors discuss the processes they used to work jointly with the student research team, and how they moved from pupils‐as‐consultants to pupils‐as‐researchers, a potentially more transformative/disruptive practice. They query the notion of ‘authentic student voice’ and show it as discursive and heterogeneous: they thus suggest that both a standards and a rights framings of student voice must be regarded critically.     

Engaging student teachers in meaningful reflective practice

This paper examines the use of peer-videoing in the classroom as a tool to promote reflective practice among student teachers. Twenty pre-service teachers from a variety of subject disciplines participating in a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education programme in an Irish university participated in the study. The practice of encouraging student teachers working in the same school to participate in structured video analysis avoids the impact of external observers whose role is largely evaluative and endorses a collaborative model that promotes dialogue and shared learning. This practice promotes a culture of observation and critical dialogue in a profession which has traditionally been characterised by isolation, while at the same time fostering and validating the voice and experience of the student teacher. Locating the discussion within the framework of the theoretical literature on reflective practice, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the international debate over best practice in supporting, encouraging and scaffolding reflective practice. It comments on the implications of reflective dialogue for the modernisation of teacher education and offers guidelines on how best to scaffold and promote reflectivity.     

Architects, captains, and dreamers: Creating advisor roles that foster youth-adult partnerships

While research has documented the many ways in which student voice can enable educational change, the process of how adults can help to enable student voice is less clear. This article examines how adults new to working as advisors of student voice initiatives begin to develop partnerships with young people. Using a Youth-Adult Partnership continuum as a framework, three cases represent a range of beliefs of student leadership. Using the archetypes of Captain, Dreamer, and Architect, the cases indicate how the adults began their work with youth with adult-centered, a student-centered, and an equilibrium approach, respectively. While the article highlights that adults must learn how to scaffold youth participation to help them to develop the leadership skills necessary to share in the work of the partnership, little training and materials exist for adults to learn how to scaffold learning. Part of this training includes the willingness for adults to recognize that they themselves need to change as well in order to facilitate youth leadership.     

What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Always Stay in Vegas: Negotiating the Curriculum Leads to Agency and Change

Through a self-study methodology, six doctoral students and a professor examine how our semester long doctoral level class became a transformative space for all participants. We investigate how each individual was able to participate in the construction of a powerful and meaningful learning community, which led to a re-visioning of ourselves as women and teacher educators. Feminist pedagogy and positioning theory provide a guiding framework for both the class and our own reflective research. Our findings include, but are not limited to, showing how negotiating the curriculum led to a doctoral class becoming a safe space and how this negotiation led to transferring democratic practices to our teaching and the tensions associated with that. This work contributes to the field of teacher education as it focuses on the importance of fostering classroom and school cultures where knowledge production is facilitated through democratized practices. Our study highlights the value of creating a learning community where all members, both students and teacher, share power, privilege, and voice. It is in these types of positive educational environments that true meaning making and change can occur.     

Increasing student voice and empowerment through technology: not just listening to the voice of the learner but using their digital capabilities to benefit a whole college community

ABSTRACT

Perceived as fostering democracy in educational institutions, approaches which encourage student voice are being promoted as supporting greater social equalities and strengthening students’ commitment to their learning. Using student voice as a theme, research funded by Jisc set out to hear learner views and explore their digital preferences when learning in a vocational context. The aim of this research was to enhance digital student practice by exploring how learners experience, use, and wish to work in, a technology-rich environment. A literature review was undertaken to inform the research ?ndings. This article focuses on innovative practice, discovered by serendipity, that went beyond the tenets usually described in the literature on student voice. Using a case study approach this article reports on work underway in one FE institution where students have been appointed as ‘Digi-Pals’ and given a key role to embed the use of digital 25technologies into student and sta? practice. Two theoretical lenses, one focused on technology and the other on student voice, are applied to explore innovative practice. The community of Digi-Pal practice is described and recommendations made for further adoption across the FE and Skills sector.     

Towards Advocacy: post‐positivist directions for progressive teacher educators

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘advocacy’ research are discussed and a plea made for pedagogy that intervenes in socially critical practices by making problematic our own ‘versions’ of student teacher needs.     

Situating power potentials and dynamics of learners and tutors within self-assessment models

Many twenty-first century educational discourses focus on including and empowering independent learners. Within the context of five self-assessment models, this article evaluates how these practices relate to the realities of student involvement, empowerment and voice. A proposed new classification of these self-assessment models is presented and theories of power and student voice are utilised to build on the limited existing literature that examines issues of power in self-assessment. The results of the evaluations show that the standard self-assessment model, which has been the default model since the 1930s, is the least empowering for students and also detrimental to producing a dialogic forum with tutors. The other models are far more conducive to permitting a shared understanding of assessment protocols, processes and products and therefore potentially lead to more equitable and transparent assessment communities. The value of this study is that it helps to clarify the possible implications and impacts resulting from the use of each self-assessment model in order to make an informed choice, which will also support the alignment of assessment practices with learning and teaching and curriculum choices.     

The impact of disciplinary background and teaching experience on the use of evaluative language in teacher feedback

This study was designed to examine secondary teachers’ use of evaluative language resources in their qualitative written feedback on student work and factors shaping the deployment of such resources. Drawing on appraisal theory as an analytic framework for the language of evaluation, the study analyzed 84 teachers’ evaluative reports on their students’ research projects. The teachers’ use of several types of evaluative language was found to differ along the lines of disciplinary background and teaching experience. These results can be explained by disciplinarily valued dispositions, epistemological beliefs, knowledge-making practices, and varying knowledge of (in)effective feedback resulting from cumulative teaching experience. Implications are derived from these findings for developing teachers’ competence in using evaluative language effectively to provide feedback that can support and maximize students’ learning.     

Death to Critique and Dissent? The Policies and Practices of New Managerialism and of 'Evidence-based Practice'

In this article, the author develops a critique of new managerialism and of its implications for the professional work of scholars and teachers. She then critiques 'evidence-based practice' as it is being developed for schools. She argues that it is only possible to make sense of the policies and practices of the evidence-based practice movement within the framework of new managerialism. She also explores some of the tensions and contradictions between managerialism and gender reform in educational contexts. She ends with a challenge to begin the work of generating the collective story through which we can dismantle the hegemony of new managerialism and engage in the transformative work that will afford us a different future.     

Learning Plans

Abstract

Learning plans are essential tools for field education. The development of a learning plan invests the student in the learning process by encouraging ownership. It alsoserves as a model to help students understand the contracting process used when engaging clients. A well thought out learning plan assures accountability and avoids problemsthat may arise resulting from unclear field expectations. Yet, many students and field instructors have difficulty in developing meaningful plans that truly relate to the social work educational experience. This paper provides a framework for developing a learning plan that includes an overview of the student, faculty advisor, and field instructor's roles and the process utilized. Working from broad comprehensive learning goals, cognitive and affective objectives are developed. This leads to specified tasks and evaluative standards. A sample format is presented to further assist students, faculty advisors, and field instructors to develop useful, instructive, and evaluative learning plans.     

Creating a space for student voice in an educational evaluation

Evaluation research focusing on educational initiatives that impact on the learning and lives of young people must be challenged to incorporate ‘student voice’. In a context of conventional evaluation models of government-led initiatives, student voice is a compelling addition, and challenges the nature of traditional forms of evaluation. It requires a student-first approach where young people actively report on their experiences, rather than being represented by others. This paper presents an evaluation that draws on large-scale ‘student voice’ contribution. Using the context of a mental health programme that was piloted in secondary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper explores the importance of a student voice agenda in evaluations. More than 2500 students participated through national surveys and an in-depth case study across five school sites. By foregrounding student voice as an evaluation tool, the ethics of student involvement becomes complex. When authentic student ‘data’ can change or challenge official thinking, students’ voice(s) can either be foregrounded or silenced. Commissioned evaluations are often fraught with wider political agendas, but evaluation researchers have a duty to ensure student voice is represented if it is to inform ongoing government policy that impacts on the lives and learning of young people.     

Transformando fronteras: Chicana feminist transformative pedagogies

In this paper, C. Alejandra Elenes proposes ways to implement the goals of border/transformative pedagogies in classroom practices in order to deal with the multiplicity of ideologies present in educational settings. The theorization and discussion presented is based on the sometimes tense relationships between Chicana faculty and White women students. Border/transformative pedagogy incorporates as social practices the construction of knowledge(s) capable of analyzing conflicts over meaning. This pedagogy is concerned with the elimination of racial, gender, class, and sexual orientation hierarchies by decentralizing hegemonic practices that places at the center of cultural practices a homogeneous belief in US society that has marginalized the cultural practices of people of color, women, and gays and lesbians. Thus, it can be viewed as liberatory by students who agree with those goals, and oppressive for students with more conservative leanings. Based on Gloria Anzaldua's conceptualization of mestiza consciousness, border/transformative pedagogies propose ways in which we can enact a practice where students and teachers participate, and that tries to undo dualistic thinking. Thus, this paper, which is based on classroom observations and analysis of student evaluations, is self-reflexive. Particular emphasis is placed on finding ways to be able to bring multiple ideologies and points of view to classroom discussion in ways that productive discourse is enabled. The discussion also centers on the contradictions present in classrooms that seek to be liberatory to the goals of democracy. Finally, the paper discusses ways in which women of color faculty can deal with racism existing in many contemporary educational settings.     

Constructing inclusive education in a neo‐liberal context: Promoting inclusion of Arab‐Australian students in an Australian context

School systems are a major social change agent capable of challenging social inequalities and economic disadvantages. Yet, while schools in Australia are being confronted with increasingly culturally diverse populations as well as an increasing focus on student retention, this transformative role is increasingly being played out in a broader educational context that has been found to replicate rather than challenge patterns of social inequality. Successive governments in Australia have responded to this context with a raft of policy initiatives. This paper, based on three‐year longitudinal research undertaken in the city of Melbourne, outlines this policy context and introduces the theoretical approach that underpins its innovative approach to managing cultural diversity in educational institutions. It argues for, and presents, a multidimensional model for managing cultural diversity in schools, one that provides the tools for transformative practices to be undertaken to effect positive change in school environments for the benefit of all students.     

Should education be transformative?

ABSTRACT

It has become commonplace within the educational research community to invoke the transformative power of education. The call to adopt a ‘transformative’ approach to teaching and learning can be heard in fields as different as adult education and school leadership and as estranged as social justice education and educational psychology. While there is undoubtedly great promise in the idea of transformative education, the fact that it involves deep psychological restructuring on the part of the student requires ethical justification. In this article, I analyze the three most pressing ethical problems that arise within a transformative educational environment: the problems of transformative consent, controversial direction and transformative trauma. In the concluding section, I argue that this ethical analysis urges us to adopt an approach to transformative education as a process of initiation.     

From data source to co-researchers? Tracing the shift from ‘student voice’ to student–teacher partnerships in Educational Action Research

This article provides a review of the concept of student voice as it has been represented in Educational Action Research from the 1990s to the present day. Contextualised within an exploration of the challenges posed by educational action research that incorporates student voice in the current age of accountability as reflected and understood in academia, we explore issues of power and authority, issues of process and issues of ownership as they emerge in the literature. We note ways in which these challenges are manifest in primary and secondary schooling and in tertiary education. Finally, we survey some recent representations of student voice in Educational Action Research, observing something of a shift from earlier conceptualisations of students as a ‘data source’ to a more active involvement as co-researchers and joint constructors of knowledge, progressing toward more active student–teacher partnerships.     

Student voice in higher education: Opening the loop

UK national policy and the practices of university course boards tend to reduce understandings of ‘student voice’ to a feedback loop. In this loop, students express feedback, the university takes this on board, then they tell the students how they have responded to their feedback. The feedback loop is a significant element of the neoliberal imaginary of higher education globally. This qualitative research study drew on interviews with course representatives in three universities in England, and on policy analysis, to explore the discursive construction and enactment of student voice. It uses the feedback loop as an analytical frame. Drawing on Foucault’s later work, the article aims to open up the feedback loop by exploring its manifestation in the mundane everyday practices of universities. In opening the loop, we identify the following effects of the student voice policy ensemble: students have to construct feedback as it is not just waiting to be gathered; it promotes a dividing practice, where reps are positioned differently to other students; there is a focus on problems; an ‘us and them’ is reinforced between staff and students; the loop closes down discussion; and a managerial logic obscures political processes. The article articulates its opening of the loop as a way of unmasking the modes of power which work through discourses of ‘student voice’, and hence seeks to create possibilities for resistance to being governed this way.     

Writing-to-learn in undergraduate science education: a community-based, conceptually driven approach

Despite substantial evidence that writing can be an effective tool to promote student learning and engagement, writing-to-learn (WTL) practices are still not widely implemented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, particularly at research universities. Two major deterrents to progress are the lack of a community of science faculty committed to undertaking and applying the necessary pedagogical research, and the absence of a conceptual framework to systematically guide study designs and integrate findings. To address these issues, we undertook an initiative, supported by the National Science Foundation and sponsored by the Reinvention Center, to build a community of WTL/STEM educators who would undertake a heuristic review of the literature and formulate a conceptual framework. In addition to generating a searchable database of empirically validated and promising WTL practices, our work lays the foundation for multi-university empirical studies of the effectiveness of WTL practices in advancing student learning and engagement.     

(Dis-) Locating the transformative dimension of global citizenship education

Despite a groundswell of evidence for transformative education, manifestos for ‘transformative pedagogy for global citizenship’ remain under-theorized and pay limited attention to implications for practice. This paper connects theory and practice through analyzing a curriculum development project that sought to produce a framework for ‘engaged global citizens’. It considers the political and philosophical framings of the self and other, citizen and world, that underlie this empirical work, especially with reference to reflexivity, hermeneutics, democratic engagement and co-production. The resultant pedagogical framework, based upon concepts of transformative learning, attempted to undercut the homogenizing tendencies within global citizenship education (GCE). This discussion highlights the tensions and reifying effects of educational frameworks such as the Teaching Excellence Framework in the UK and the proposed framework for ‘global competence’ in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment. Evidence is presented that frameworks which attempt to make explicit educational phenomena and processes are overdetermined by efficacy and metrics that become perverse ends in themselves. While the anticipated project output here was the framework itself, the substantive output was, in fact, practical: namely the ongoing deliberation and reflection upon the discourses that both do and undo the task of locating the transformative dimension of GCE.