Students as expert witnesses of teaching and learning

Abstract

Student voice is a key component in constructing discourses of respect, empowerment and citizenship in schools. It can help schools to become learning communities, rather than knowledge factories, that serve the needs of the majority of their members, the students, as successfully as possible and prepare them for future lives in a wide variety of contexts. It can help to improve pedagogical and organisational practice. This article takes the position that students are expert observers of school life and teachers’ practices and interrogates what they consider to be more and less successful approaches to those. It draws on three studies of student voices that were carried out by the author with colleagues between 2006 and 2011 in England and Lebanon in primary and secondary schools.