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Student voice

Research shows that students' opportunity to influence their education – so-called student voice – plays an important role for both learning and wellbeing in class. Student voice is about teachers using approaches and strategies that give students the opportunity to influence matters relating to teaching, such as content, working methods, and decisions in the classroom. The starting point is simple: students have valuable knowledge about their own schooling and should therefore be allowed to help shape it.

A large study by the researchers Jerusha Conner and colleagues from 2018 examined how different forms of student voice relate to students' engagement and outcomes in school. Just over 2,000 students from both lower and upper secondary school took part.

Three important parts of student voice​

The study highlights three central aspects in particular:

  • Teacher receptivity – the degree to which students feel the teacher is willing to listen to their ideas.
  • Teacher responsiveness – whether the teacher actually uses students' input and makes changes.
  • Choice – whether students get to choose between different tasks, working methods, or content.

More engagement when students get to influence​

A clear result was that student voice is strongly linked to students' engagement in schoolwork. The more often teachers asked for students' thoughts and opinions, the more engaged the students felt.

Students become more active​

The study also showed that students who encounter teaching where their voices are valued develop greater student agency – that is, a sense of being able to make a difference. These students are more likely to dare to express their ideas, take part in discussions, and contribute to the development of the school.

Connection to attendance and outcomes​

Student voice was also associated with lower absence, although this association became somewhat weaker when the researchers took other factors into account. The results still suggest that students who feel listened to are more often in school.

The most important thing: being listened to​

The most interesting finding concerned teacher receptivity. Students who felt their teachers were open to their thoughts and ideas showed:

  • higher engagement
  • greater student agency
  • better grades, especially in mathematics and English
  • higher grades overall
  • lower absence

Receptivity turned out to be more important than both the opportunity to choose and how often the teacher makes changes. It thus seems that the very experience of being listened to is decisive.

What does this mean in practice?​

In summary, research shows that student voice is not only about democracy, but is also an important pedagogical tool. When teachers actively listen to their students and take their perspectives seriously, both engagement, participation, and to some extent school results are strengthened.

This type of research, together with other studies, underpins the development of Pomelo, which aims to strengthen students' participation in teaching.

Conner, J., Mitra, D. L., Holquist, S. E., & Boat, A. (2018). How teachers' student voice practices affect student engagement and achievement: Exploring choice, receptivity, and responsiveness to student voice as moderators. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(7), 1231–1246.