Student Voice Research Articles

Transforming Worlds Into Words: Using ChatGPT to Bring Student Visions to Life

This action research study evaluated an original lesson using the AI language model ChatGPT to generate tailored play scripts for individual students based on their interests, reading levels, and creative visions. Implemented with 13 third and fourth graders in an after-school program, the “Journeying between Worlds and Words” lesson aimed to empower students to translate their imaginative worlds into written scenes they could perform. The ChatGPT-generated scripts promoted high engagement, with students excited to see their ideas brought to life. The scripts provided authentic opportunities to build reading fluency through repeated readings and comprehension by dissecting characters, settings, and events. Students demonstrated creativity in elaborating on storylines and props. Using ChatGPT proved feasible and efficient for obtaining appropriately leveled, high-interest scripts compared to pre-existing scene collections. The lesson showed promise for differentiating instruction and empowering student voice and serves as a model for other projects. Rather than struggling to find the right book/script, teachers could harness AI to generate relevant stories matching each student’s needs and passions. Overall, this lesson highlights AI’s potential for transforming students from consumers of learning experiences to creators of their own.

“They Just Want Our Faces, But They Don’t Want Our Experiences”: Amplifying Black Doctoral Student Voice Through Counter-Storytelling

This study uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) via counterstory methodology to explore how 24 Black graduate students navigated doctoral programs in research-intensive and predominantly white universities. Participants described their experiences in postgraduate programs as characterized by tokenization and social isolation. Participants also named the faculty’s critical role in hindering and helping their academic processes and described strategies to navigate and overcome the systemic and social barriers they faced. These findings evidence the need to develop and improve pathways for diversity, equity, and belonging (DEB) in doctoral programs and universities.

Democratizing the EFL classroom: the impact of a negotiated syllabus on student voice and critical engagement

Democratizing the EFL classroom: the impact of a negotiated syllabus on student voice and critical engagement

Attitudes of Primary Students in Kuwait Toward the Inclusion of Peers with Disabilities in Mainstream Schools

Inclusive education has become a focal point in educational reform, particularly in countries like Kuwait, where efforts to integrate students with disabilities in mainstream settings are relatively new. This study addresses a gap in the literature by exploring the voices of young students in a Kuwaiti mainstream primary school, an area that remains under-researched in the context of inclusion. Specifically, this qualitative interpretive case study examines the attitudes of three non-disabled primary school students toward the inclusion of their peers with disabilities. The study utilized a focus group discussion (FGD) with the three students, each aged between 8 and 10 years. The FGD included prompts that encouraged students to discuss their views on friendship, empathy, collaboration, and sharing with peers with disabilities. Data was analyzed through coding, categorizing, and thematic analysis to capture key perspectives. The findings reveal that the students hold overwhelmingly positive attitudes towards inclusion, with specific themes of empathy, openness to friendship, willingness to collaborate, and a strong sense of fairness emerging from their responses. This study contributes uniquely to the literature by providing insights from a student-centered perspective on inclusive education in Kuwait, highlighting the importance of fostering inclusive attitudes from a young age to support the successful inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream schools.

Working for Social Justice: A Review of Students as Leaders in Pedagogical Partner Programs

Students as Partners (SaP) programs have centered student voices since their inception. Student–faculty pedagogical partnerships are grounded in the notion that students have the expertise to contribute to faculty in preparing for, reflecting on, and revising teaching and learning practices in ways that are inclusive and responsive to all learners. This expertise is based in part on their lived experiences—both as students and as members of the student populations that SaP programs were intentionally created to help empower (e.g., first generation, low-income, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of Color) and others marginalized in higher education). These students, in dialogue with faculty, help to expose equity issues across classrooms. As SaP programs have proliferated in colleges and universities across the globe, the student partners’ role as social justice advocates in these programs have expanded too. This review explores the pedagogical partnership literature over the past 20 years, to establish the ways in which undergraduate students and post-bacs have flourished in leadership roles in SaP programs: (a) acting as leaders for social equity on campus, (b) serving as peer mentors to new student partners in existing programs, (c) co-creating new programs, and (d) publishing in the literature. This review reveals opportunities for new directions with peer mentorship in SaP programs through the role of lead student mentors who can help to scale up SaP programs, support the emotional labor involved in partnership work, and create pathways to future social justice leadership opportunities.

Centring international student voice: a collaborative autoethnography and critical reflections from an equity-focused doctoral course

Centring international student voice: a collaborative autoethnography and critical reflections from an equity-focused doctoral course

Re-Envisioning Classroom Culture in an Introductory General Chemistry Course: Description of a Course Redesign Project

In the U.S., the retention of students in STEM degree pathways has been an issue that many higher education institutions have and continue to face. Many of us in the chemistry education community have been reflecting on our own roles and responsibilities to create a more inclusive learning environment for all students in chemistry. Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and culturally responsive teaching (CRT) are two influential frameworks that informed efforts in promoting inclusivity in chemistry classrooms. However, the current literature focuses primarily on isolated interventions, highlighting a need for theoretical development that articulates the synergy between the two frameworks and synthesizes them in the context of chemistry education. In this essay, we present a framework for re-envisioning chemistry classroom culture consisting of four tenets: culturally relevant chemistry knowledge, cultural validation, collectivist cultural orientations, and humanized chemistry learning environments. We identified five course redesign entry points: amplifying student voice, emphasizing group work, contextualizing content knowledge, scaffolding technical language, and revising assessment structures. We hope to present both a framework and a set of course redesign entry points for chemistry educators interested in re-envisioning their classroom culture. We will also discuss the evaluation plan of this project and future work to sustain student cultural assets in chemistry classrooms.

Challenges faced by international nursing students undertaking graduate research: Contemporary issues.

Challenges faced by international nursing students undertaking graduate research: Contemporary issues.

Wellbeing and Learning Post-Pandemic: Amplifying the Voices of Early Secondary School Students

Education systems have had to rethink their approach in terms of wellbeing and learning particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the numerous crises being faced across the world. Learner voice has to be woven through all levels of policy in order to understand the experience of young people, during and since the pandemic. Post-Covid, there is a need for educational reform to articulate the direct link between wellbeing and learner progress and to debate the questions of how we assess learner progress. This journal article draws on a small empirical study of learners, conducted by a headteacher researcher in June 2023, to explore participants’ experiences of learning in their first two years directly following school closures. The paper draws on literature from the original study, completed in 2023 and literature published since. It aims to highlight the voice of the learners as being crucial to research on wellbeing and learning and to amplify the influence of learner voice on further research and policy making. The research findings demonstrate that, immediately following the pandemic, young people had a heightened awareness of their own wellbeing and the support that they require. This paper challenges educators to consider how the change in young people’s engagement with this aspect of their learning might be used to influence educational reform. The study also highlights the importance of privileging the learner experience with practices that encourage safe articulation of complex feelings. In terms of learning, the findings suggest that there needs to be a deeper consideration of how and what young people learn, what motivates them to learn and how attitudes both to how and what they learn has changed since the pandemic. While the general discourse of curriculum reform in Scotland is asserted to be in line with the views of the young people, there is a dearth of evidence of young people’s voice influencing policy change at all levels.

Perception of Clinical Learning Experience: Dental Student Voices.

This study sought to explore dental students' perceptions of their clinical learning experience through the use of similes and metaphors in order to provide useful insights for clinical teaching. 69 dental students in their clinical years (4th, 5th and 6th) participated in this study by responding to an online survey from February to April 2023 at the Toulouse University Hospital Centre. The sentence they were asked to complete concerning their clinical learning was 'To be a clinical dental student in 2023 is…'. A thematic analysis of free-text responses was conducted to generate themes reflecting the perceptions of students. The students perceived their clinical studies as a long and difficult journey, requiring adaptability, resilience, and endurance to face complex or uncomfortable situations. Their environment was often perceived as hostile, and their clinical development as a battle. However, they also recognised that this difficult learning process was an investment in their future, with the hope of bringing smiles to patients' faces. This study allowed dental students to express their views on their clinical learning experience, and students should have more opportunities to influence their learning through feedback. In a dental course, the arts can serve as a powerful tool for diagnosing learning and teaching problems and to express emotions, which can have a positive impact on professional growth.

Delivering inclusive and accessible education via a change in pedagogical approach using the student voice: reducing a high failure rate module into a highly successful module

The need to prioritise student engagement through inclusive, student-centred education is increasingly recognised in higher education institutions across the UK. This study investigates how incorporating the student voice can transform a challenging core module within a Business Management degree. Students need to be viewed as customers and be listened to, as they invest significant time and resources into their education. Consequently, the student voice has become crucial as universities strive to achieve high NSS scores, improve rankings, and reduce attrition rates, which impact revenue. By making proactive changes with students at the heart of decision-making, this study employs a three-stage mixed-methods approach involving secondary data, pre-intervention interviews, and post-intervention focus groups to explore how student feedback informed pedagogical changes in an Accounting and Finance module. The findings highlight the value of co-creation with students, demonstrating that such engagement can enhance academic performance and lead to higher pass rates.

Re-defining ‘success’ in relation to outreach programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students: centering the voices of students, staff and caregivers

Re-defining ‘success’ in relation to outreach programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students: centering the voices of students, staff and caregivers

Can student evaluations be made more representative? Testing alternative strategies

ABSTRACT Student evaluations are regularly used to assess the quality of faculty teaching. However, low response rates and unrepresentative student samples can bias the conclusions drawn from them. We conduct a randomized experiment at a selective liberal arts college in the United States to test whether student evaluations can be made more representative of the broader student population through changes to the prompt or timing at which feedback is solicited. We find that Pell Grant recipients, students with low GPAs, and those later in their college careers are less likely to complete teaching evaluations and to write more than three words in response to qualitative questions evaluating the instructor across all study conditions. Black, Hispanic, and multi-racial students are less likely than white students to complete traditional evaluations solicited at the end-of-semester. Providing an alternate prompt, which asks students to articulate their own criteria for effective teaching, increases the likelihood that students write more than three words and increases the total words written, conditional on responding. Delaying the solicitation of feedback until the following semester decreases overall response rates, particularly for seniors, but does so to a lesser degree for Black, Hispanic, and multi-racial students than white students, resulting in a more racially representative sample overall. This suggests a potential tradeoff between overall response rates and the representation of minority student voices in providing student feedback on teaching.

The Terms of Inclusion: Transitional School Programs in a Racialized Organizational Field

As organizations committed to providing upward social mobility and leadership development for academically high-achieving working-class youth of color, transitional school programs (TSPs) prepare students to transition from urban public schools to elite, mostly private high schools. However, TSPs’ dependence on wealthy, White institutions to achieve these goals highlights racialized contradictions in the organizational field. How do TSPs navigate the race and class conflicts between the goals of their program and the racial organizational field of elite schools on which they depend for survival? Drawing on two years of ethnographic research at Ascend, a TSP in a northeastern city, this article demonstrates how because of racialized dependencies, Ascend is compelled to adopt the inequitable practices and assumptions of the racialized organizational field of elite education. Yet over time, the organization begins to resist this organizational order by decoupling their practices from elite schools. Student voice and activism contributed to destabilizing this racialized organizational order through direct action. As Ascend’s loose coupling to the field became untenable during national student protests, the organization sought to recouple to the demands of student protesters by explicitly renegotiating the terms of inclusion for their students in the racialized organizational field. These findings contribute to a limited literature about TSPs, organizations critical to the desegregation of elite schools. The findings also demonstrate how studying an organization in the context of its organizational field can reveal how organizations become racialized in practice. Finally, the case of Ascend shows that decoupling, previously theorized to be a method of evading commitments to equity, may also be a method of subverting racialized dependencies.

Student Voice is an Art

One of the biggest challenges on a college campus is finding a way to bring student voice to faculty in a way that is not intimidating to the students and creates a safe space for faculty to talk about their practices and how it affects students. This is a challenge that I have faced as the director of Faculty LIFE (Learning Innovation and Faculty Engagement) Center. The goal of our center is to support faculty in all aspects of their jobs, which includes connecting with students and helping to retain them on our campus. In that effort, our center seeks opportunities to bring students and faculty together to understand each other to improve learner experiences and increase retention.

What makes students strong? A student's voice study on resilience

AbstractIn times of crisis, resilience—the ability to cope with challenges—has become crucial, especially for primary school students facing issues such as the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine, educational disadvantages, or family‐related struggles. This is particularly true for students with special educational needs (SEN) or those from migrant backgrounds. The present study explores the factors that foster resilience in these students. Using a sequential explanatory design, the study involved two phases. In the first phase, resilience was measured through a paper‐and‐pencil questionnaire (N = 882 primary school students from Germany). In the second phase, 13 highly resilient students were interviewed using a semi‐structured guide. Quantitative results showed that overall, students demonstrated a high tendency towards resilience. Multilevel regression analysis revealed that personal factors (e.g., family language, SEN), relationships with peers and teachers, and school resources were significant predictors of resilience. Qualitative findings indicated that personal resources—such as self‐efficacy and emotional regulation—were more influential for resilience than external factors like family or community resources.

Student Voice: Reviewing two decades of the literature to guide the next 20 years

Attention to students and their education experiences has become increasingly important in the 21st century. Student experience - particularly active and agentic practices captures in terms like 'student voice' and 'partnership' - was an obvious choice in response to Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP) editors' commissioned series of literature reviews analysing 20 years of the journal's publications. A hybrid method for the systematic review was guided by the question: What has been published about student voice and partnership in JUTLP, and how has this scholarship evolved over the journal's 20-year history? A student voice and partnership framework adapted from Fielding (2004, 2012) was developed to provide theoretical guidance for the review. In total, 92 publications were identified and described quantitatively (year, country, research design, etc) and qualitatively using reflexive thematic analysis. Overall, the findings show increased publications over time that document active student involvement in developing, shaping ,designing, evaluating or researching alongside staff. The upward trend of partnership is a marked change from early JUTLP publications that studied students as objects of research and sources of data with passive roles in education practices and student life activities. The trend is toward students as active, agentic participants, partners and leaders in shaping and influencing their education experiences. Moving into the next 20 years, the JUTLP community is urged to engage with students as co-authors, co-researchers, and co-designers to report on educational praxis with staff and to open up new avenues for student contributions to knowledge and the mission of JUTLP.

Benefits and challenges of inclusive emerging technologies in universities: Analysis of the voice of students

Benefits and challenges of inclusive emerging technologies in universities: Analysis of the voice of students

‘The standard is the standard’: constructing meritocratic student selves through sense-making on academic writing

Higher education initiatives to support students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are widespread. However, there is pervasive concern within public discourse that such widening participation efforts have contributed to a ‘dumbing down’ of higher education. There are classed dimensions to evaluations of (dis)advantaged students’ university (un)preparedness. Our investigation centres the under-researched voices of students in exploring these tensions. Using vignette methods, we investigate students’ views on how universities should accommodate the needs of disadvantaged students in a highly affective field of practice—academic writing and assessments. We detail how class-based exclusions are (re)formulated through the misrecognition of dis/advantages, and assumptions of meritocracy, which underpin students’ suggestions. We close by proposing that greater public discussion on social class inequities may aid students in understanding their potential role in reducing classed inequities, in higher education and beyond.

Climate change education in primary schools: using arts-based methods to access student voice and examine the UK National Curriculum

Education plays a critical role in shaping national responses to the climate crisis. Research on climate change education (CCE) promotes its integration into national curricula, with calls for it to be prioritised by policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, and for effective teaching to be extended beyond science and geography. This article contributes to the ways in which these calls can be answered. Drawing on a case study of a Climate Change Club in a UK maintained infant school (a state, local authority owned school for children aged four to seven), it explores how learning through arts-based methods enables access to student voice in ways which can inform pedagogic practice and generate ideas for curriculum change. Theoretically informed by critical climate justice praxis, the article’s main findings indicate the need to integrate CCE in foundation stage 2 (students aged 4 to 5) and key stage one (students aged 5 to 7) curricula; that climate change should be approached through a topic-based curriculum; and the importance of incorporating student voice into curriculum design. While the study is small-scale, it offers important insights on some ways of addressing students climate change learning in Key Stage 1.