University of East London (Docklands Campus)Listening to Learners: Partnerships in Action

Wednesday 22 April, 2009

Student voice, democracy Student voice, democracy and the necessityand the necessity

of radical educationof radical education

Michael Fielding

Institute of Education, University of Londonm.fielding@ioe.ac.uk

Recent Contexts

Changing view of childhood UN Convention on Rights of the Child

1989 School improvement OfSTED Inspection framework Citizenship + Healthy Schools Consumerism Public service ‘reform’ Children’s Commissioner Work of Professor Jean Rudduck

Youth: tracing conceptual renewal

Industrial(modernity 1945-1975)

Post-industrial(late modernity 1976- )

Youth as transitional period to adulthood

Blurring lines between youth and adult

Adulthood – a point of arrival

Adulthood – a state of re-invention & improvement

Youth as future of society: both hope & threat

Youth as decision-makers + entrepreneurs in the present

Youth as deficit (pupils, patients)

Youth as partners (co-learners, self-managing)

Youth as responsibility of the state (student)

Youth as consumer (client, choice-maker)

Mainstream and at-risk DiversitySource: Wyn, 2009.

Immediate Contexts

Government Legalisation / Initiatives / Research Every Child Matters Personalised Learning Specialist Schools & Academies Trust NCSL ‘Real Decision Making? School Councils in

Action’ ‘Working Together: Giving children and

young people a say’NGOs / Foundations

Esmée Fairbairn / Carnegie YPI Futurelab

Academic Research + Publications ESRC TLRP ‘Consulting Pupils about T&L’

New pressures …

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Baby Before Birth

The Secret of Prenatal Learning

New pressures …Birth to three matters

Maps ‘Skill & competence’ of babies

and toddlers aged 0-3

4 themes,

16 dimensions,

64 components with detailed guidance on

• Observing & recording

• Planning

• Responding to diversity

• Challenges

Range of Student Voice Activities (1)

Peer support

Buddying systems

Peer tutoring / listening

Peer teaching

Peer mediator

Circle time (same year / mixed age)

Range of Student Voice Activities (2)

Organisational reflection + renewal ‘School’ / student councils Student teams e.g. Mulberry School for Girls, Tower Hamlets /

Blue School, Wells / Ringwood School, Hampshire

Working party reps Student governors Student ambassadors Tour guides Appointment panels Junior Leadership Team e.g. Greenford High School, Ealing

School Improvement Plans / policy writing Mixed-age Circle Time e.g. Wroxham School, Potters Bar

Healthy Schools OfSTED ECM

Range of Student Voice Activities (3)

Teaching & Learning

AfL

Lead-learners

Students as Learning Partners

Students-as-co-researchers

Students-as-researchers

Student-led learning walks

Evaluating work units

Dept / Unit development plans

Range of Student Voice Activities (4)

Classroom consultation(with your own class)

Classroom observation (including SaLPs)

Video recording

Questionnaires

‘Transforming learning’

Focus groups Interviews

Suggestion boxes Diaries

Photos Collage

Learning Review Meetings

From audience to author, from data to dialogue (1)how adults listen to and learn with students in schools

Classroom Dept / Team SchoolStudents as

Data SourceIndividual performance data

Samples of student work

Student attitude surveys

Students as

Active Respondents

AfL lead learners

Team agenda + student perceptions

Students on staff appointment panels

Students as

Co-Researchers

Developing independent learning

‘History Dudettes’ (History Dept review team)

Joint review of rewards system

From audience to author, from data to dialogue (2)how adults listen to and learn with students in schools

Classroom Dept / Team School

Students as Knowledge

Creators

What Makes a Good Lesson?

Evaluate playground buddying system

Low level bullying

YP + Adult Co-authors

Joint Enquiry

Stantonbury Day 10 on e.g.

poetry writing

Develop unit /department research lesson

Staff + student Learning Walks

YP + Adults in search of the Common Good

Participatory Democracy

Y6 + museum staff + teacher co-plan visit for Y3

Classes as critical friends in thematic exploration

Whole school forum e.g.

Alex Bloom,

St George-in-the-East, Stepney

Ongoing practical challenges (1)

InclusionWhich students? Whose voices?

race

gender

social class ability labelling

An unusual, elite activity?

or

an inclusive commitment that involves all students in all aspects of their lives at school?

30% decline in sense of being "listened to" around teaching + learning between Y3 + Y11

Despite 2004 Children Act and OfSTED's 2005 framework, Antidote’s recent School Emotional Environment for Learning Survey (SEELS) survey of 23,000 students shows that, between Y3 and Y11, they experience a 30% decline in their sense of being "listened to" around teaching and learning.

‘Students say the structures + systems set up to collect their views involve too few people + have little chance of making meaningful changes to school life.  The students taking part are often the most articulate, intelligent + well-behaved. The rest then feel there is little point in even being interested.’ Source Antidote e-News, November 2008

Ongoing practical challenges (2)

Teacher tensions Pressures of time + curriculum coverage Lack of institutional support Beyond pockets of isolated practice (role of LA +

national + international networks) Consumerism or democratic agency? e.g. “You’re no good, no bullet points, too much thinking, not thick enough files”

Using students? Refusing the role of ‘quality assurance donkeys’ ‘Beating up’ teachers? e.g excesses of covert

observation

Ongoing intellectual challenges (1)

1 Becoming a person

no real account of how we become persons

2 Exploitation or fulfilment?

no way of distinguishing between new forms of exploitation / intensification + approaches that are genuinely concerned for the whole person

3 Democracy

little sustained or confident reference to democracy as a way of living and learning

Ongoing intellectual challenges (2)

4 History

no sense of historical location + the glib dismissal of anything prior to 1988

Countering ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’

E. P. Thompson

Thinking back and thinking at all

Society remembers less and less faster and faster. The sign of the times is thought that has succumbed to fashion; it scorns the past as antiquated while touting the present as the best.

Society has lost its memory, and with it, its mind. The inability or refusal to think back takes its toll in the inability to think.

Source

Social Amnesia:

a critique of conformist psychology

Russell Jacoby

1996

Ongoing intellectual challenges (3)

5 Educational Values

presumption of sameness, domestication of ‘moral purpose’, + denial of radical traditions

6 Political Fundamentals

no attempt to distinguish between the demands of global capitalism and the possibility of a different kind of society

New developments in student voice: shaping schools for the future

part funded by

Esmee Fairbairn Foundation

1 Radical inclusion involving those whose voices are seldom heard

2 Reversing roles students as agents of adult professional learning

3 Co-constructing the common good remaking public spaces in schools where

adults + young people can have an open dialogue

Personalized learning

Person centred education

Student consultation

Participatory democracy

Instrumental(solitary)

Communal(individual)

Instrumental(plural)

Communal(mutual)

Voice

Individualvoice

Voice

Relational conversation

Voice

Representative voice

Voice

Restlessdialogue

Main concern

Instrumental outcomes

Main concern

Lead a good lifeMain concern

Utilise all perspectives to improve results

Main concern

Co-create a good society / better

worldEnergiser

Individualambition

Energiser

Personal development

Energiser

Full informed accountability

Energiser

Shared responsibility for a

better futureDominant model

Consumerchoice

Dominant model

Family /friendship

Dominant model

Learning organisation

Dominant model

Learning community

Key question

What job do I wish to do /

course do I wish to take?

Key question

What kind of person

do I wish to become?

Key question

How can we learn from everyone to

achieve better outcomes?

Key question

How do we develop an inclusive,

creative society together?

What it means to live a good and meaningful life

‘In our short-term and disposable society there need to be spaces where young people can discuss what it means to live a good and meaningful life and the kinds of people they wish to become’

‘Living in “X Factor” Britain: Neo-liberalism and “Educated” Publics’

Nick Stevenson

Soundings ‘Class and Culture debate’ (2008) http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/class_and_culture/stevenson.html

Spaces for dialogue and discussionWithin the school

Where are the spaces, both formal and informal for dialogue and discussion

for students? for staff? for students and staff? Where are the spaces for the exploration

and articulation of a life narrative? Where are the spaces for restless

encounter where we come to re-see each other and open up a new possibilities ?

Spaces for restless encounter (1)

Affirmengage

Re-see (Restless encounter) Celebration Challenge

Renewreplace

Approach

communal events

in ways

which enable

a range of people

to contribute

Pedagogy

Self-managed learning groups

Pair / group /project work +

communal presentations

Critical pedagogy Teacher as co-learner (Michael Armstrong)

Apply insights

to develop

earlier / new practices

Department / integrated teams

Department A Level residentials

Field trips

Dept / course review (students)CPD

Students as Learning Partners

MSO (Mutual Support + Observation)

Spaces for restless encounter (2)

Affirmengage

Re-see (Restless encounter) Celebration Challenge

Renewreplace

Approach

communal events

in ways

which enable

a range of people

to contribute

Curriculum structures

Day / Week 10 (Stantonbury)

Mixed age, thematic conferences

(St George’s)

Tartan curriculum (Bishops Park College)

apply insights to develop earlier / new practices

School

USSR (Sbor)

Countesthorpe (Moot)

Stantonbury (Hall Meeting)

St George's (School Meeting)

apply insights to develop earlier / new practices

System

Prefigurative practice

Progressive networks / alliances

Radical traditions

Draw strength from depth of thinking and counter examples

DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURESSt George-in-the-East Secondary School, Stepney, London (1953)

Staff Students School

Staff Panel All staff (about 10)

Pupil Panel Head Boy / Girl Deputy HB/G Form Reps Secretary Headteacher

Joint Panel Staff Panel Member Head Boy / Girl Chairs of Pupil Committees Headteacher

Weekly Meeting Schedule

Form Meeting Pupil Committees Monday Morning Ongoing dance meals sport tidy social

Pupil Panel Friday Morning

Staff PanelMonday lunchtime

Monthly Meeting Schedule

Pupil Panel Staff Panel ▼ ▼

Joint PanelLast Friday of the month

▼School Council [whole school: students + staff]

Monday following Joint Panel Meeting

DEMOCRATIC RELATIONSHIPSSt George-in-the-East Secondary School, London (1953)

Individual significance + communal contribution ‘the child must feel that … he does count, that he is wanted, that he has a contribution to make to the common good’

The community’s capacity to inspire commitment ‘the child must feel the school community is worthwhile’

From fear ‘Fear of authority, fear of failure, fear of punishment’

To friendship ‘Friendship, security and the recognition of each child’s worth’

From exclusion

No competition

No marks / prizes

No streaming / setting

No punishment

To inclusion emulation / ipsative striving intrinsic motivation + communal recognition all ability, sometimes mixed-age grouping restorative, communal response

DEMOCRATIC LEARNINGSt George-in-the-East Secondary School, London (1953)

Communal frameworks for individual + group learning School study (agreed theme) e.g Man’s Dependence on Man

Thematic day conference where work is shared Residential camps Learning in the community

Negotiate what you learn Mixed age Electives (choose what to study after taster session) Art Book-binding Creative writing Debates Drama Dramatic reading Fabric printing French Housecraft Italic writing Literature Music Mythology Needlecraft Poetry Puppetry Recorder playing Weaving What’s on? Woodwork Student initiated Extra Maths Extra English Non-groups group absorb into existing group include in new activity

Each class approaches School Study differently – internal negotiation

Learn with + from each other (students + staff) Relationships with class teacher Individual Weekly reviews Form meetings (Whole) School Council / School Meeting

A vision of what the new form of Secondary School can be

‘The pioneering and missionary

work which has been carried

out over the past two and a

half years, always in a spirit of confident adventure,

has attained not only the goal which the school set

itself from the beginning, but also something much

more – it has given a vision of what the new

form of Secondary School can be.’ Report by H.M. Inspectors

St, George-in-the East County Secondary School, Stepney, London

Inspected 25th-27th February, 1948

Why Alex Bloom is important

Caring relationships

Freedom in the context

of community

Significance and

identity - contribute to common good

Worthwhile, inclusive community

Live the future now (radical tradition)

Democracy as a way of living + learning

insistent affirmation of possibility