So How Was School Today? Gavin Murphy Research Fellow, School of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Researchly Reflections and Possibilities: Within and Beyond ‘So How Was School Today?’

Gavin Murphy Research Fellow, School of Education, University College Dublin Endeavour Research Fellow, Melbourne Graduate School of Education (July-December 2018)

• 3. (ii) Possible signposts for leadership practices
• 2. (i) Reflection on design
• 3. (i) Possible signposts for evaluation
• 2. (ii) Reflection on findings
• 1. Overview, main concepts,

main idea in Irish context

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=273&v=e6iBCmkyHLA

Striking findings

• Students have little autonomy (self-rule) and control over what happens to

them in school.

• Most students did not feel they could explain themselves without conflict.
• Less than half of students are satisfied with counselling and career

guidance services, and just half are satisfied with the availability and quality of learning support.

• Girls-only schools have higher levels of exam stress.
• The survey suggests that as young people move through the secondary

school system they become less positive in their attitudes about school. More research is needed to explore how the school system connects with the experiences of young people as they get older.

Overview and setting the ‘leadership’ scene

• Student voice and participation (SVP) is a ‘hot topic’ in both Ireland and Australia, but is it a ‘fad’ or a

new order of experience?

• It is reflected in the policy context and, consequently, in how we think about and do leadership and

school improvement

• E.g. The Inspectorate (Ireland); Amplify (Victoria)
• Rudduck and McIntyre (2007) make clear that it is also necessary to underline that without ‘firm

commitment from the school’s leadership it is difficult for individual teachers to take the risks involved’ (p. 177) to engage in SVP (i.e. to embed SVP in pedagogic process rather than as a response to the pedagogic ‘product’)

• Power sharing at ‘commencement of education and not as its end point’ (Biesta in Mockler &

Groundwater-Smith, 2014, p. 18). A key issue in voice is power: who has the power to exercise their voice and whose voice is silent.

• Quinn and Owen (2016) indicate, consultation leading to pupil centeredness is only likely to be

achieved contingent on the disruption of administrative legacies by including young people in administrative structures of schooling – leads to issues of trust;

• Distributed leadership hinges on trust, reliance, and obligation (Spillane, 2006). Muijs et al. (2010)

and Devine (2013), for example, argue that distributed leadership can include (and should recognise) SVP.

Improvements and challenges of SVP

Improvements in

• learning and in attitudes related to school have been reported

by children and by adults, such as teachers and student teachers (Cook-Sather, 2009), when children are consulted and engaged with in authentic dialogue and consultation, including in the secondary school (Day, Gu, & Sammons, 2016; de Róiste, Kelly, Molcho, Gavin, & Nic Gabhainn, 2012; Pekrul & Levin, 2007). Moreover, when students have a say at school their wellbeing also improves (Anderson & Graham, 2016). Many

• challenges exist in realising this in practice, however, particularly given the

legacies of hierarchical structures in secondary schools which appear to impact the inception of more democratic and collegiate leadership practices (Bush, 2010; Smyth, 2016). Thinking of (certain) children and young people in asset

• based or deficit-based

ways. Another challenge for leaders is in the evaluative

• generative tensions related to

student voice and participation.

The policy context in Ireland

• National Strategy on Children and Young People’s

Participation in Decision-making, part of Better

Outcomes, Brighter Futures: The National Policy Framework for Children and Young People, 2014-2020.

• Department of Children and Youth Affairs and Department
• f Education and Skills work together given that the goal is

“to ensure that children and young people will have a voice in their individual and collective everyday lives” (p. 3)

• Other objectives of the strategy are to promote effective

leadership to champion and promote participation of children and young people; develop education and training for professionals working with young people; and to mainstream the participation of children and young people in the development of policy, legislation and research.

The UNCRC

• Article 12 means that young people have the right to give their
• pinion, and adults should listen to them.
• Article 28 means that young people have the right to an education,

and they should be encouraged to go to school.

• Article 29 means that education should be designed to help young

people develop their skills and abilities.

Children’s rights and the Lundy model

Hart (1992): Ladder of participation

Youth-initiated, shared decisions with adults Youth-initiated and directed Adult-initiated, shared decisions with youth Consulted and informed Assigned but informed Tokenism Decoration Manipulation

Lodge (2005) in Ainscow and Messiou (2017)

Lodge (

• 2005) categorises four types of participation.

Students are passive

• quality control (
• sts used for institutional gains)

students as sources of information (used for school improvement but not

• engaged with)

Students more active

• compliance and control (serves institutional goals but involves students and
• gives them their right to discuss school)

and dialogue:

• ‘‘It is more than conversation, it is the building of shared
• narrative. Dialogue is about engagement with others through talk to arrive at

a point one would not get to alone’’ (p. 134).

Observations

• Providing ways for students to influence their schools and help make key decisions benefits them.

It improves the school culture and the learning environment, so students should be considered partners in learning. (Lundy 2007, Devine and McGillicuddy 2016, Downes 2013, Symonds 2015, Rudduck 2007.)

• Students are concerned that all aspects of their lives – what they wear, eat, do, think and learn –

are controlled when they are at school. But students have little say on what is happening and how it affects them. (Devine 2003.)

• Student councils/ student voice teams often have little influence on what happens in schools.

They are not able to bring about major change. Instead, they are consulted about behaviour and

• discipline. (Fielding 2011, Keogh and White 2005, Osler 2010, Rudduck 2007.)
• For some, this is seen as tokenism, defined as a ‘term is used to imply a criticism of behaviours

that are seen to be for the sake of appearance’ as well as the inclusion/ exclusion of a group of people.

• Young people are ‘additionally disadvantaged compared to the adult groups who are subjected to

tokenism due to generally accepted assumptions of their lack of capacity and dependency’ (Lundy, 2018, p. 342)

• Teachers may be reluctant to let students have their say because they

are worried about disruptive behaviour and discipline. (Devine, 2002) Teachers experience pressures because of our very competitive, exam-focused system that results in teachers teaching to the test. This has a direct effect on students’ experience. (Devine, Fahie and McGillicuddy 2013.)

• The way students are permitted to share their opinions is

inconsistent, and it may not be done to benefit students and their

• schools. There is a risk that these councils are organised only because

evaluations require it. (Rogers and Gunter 2012.)

Some practice ‘issues’ observed

• Not democratically-electing representatives of the student representative council, and not having

diverse membership across all year groups. Occasionally it has been observed that, unfairly, voices across different year groups are given unequal weighting – THE GOOD CHILD

• A lack of profile in the school climate afforded to the student representative council and

facilitating its efforts to include the wider student body’s voice and, thus, priorities in the life of the school - MARGINALISATION

• Adequately promoting and engaging in interaction between the student representative council

and the board of management (the administration of Irish secondary schools) - ADMINISTRATION

• Providing leadership training by way of induction for representatives of the student

representative council

• In turn, that the student representative council are encouraged by school leadership to seek to

represent the voices of the wider student body - REPRESENTATION

• Embracing the necessity to develop a formal and consultative whole-school approach to

meaningful facilitation of student voice, particularly in relation to decision-making processes in the school. These initiatives could include school planning partnerships – E.G. CURRICULUM

Researchly..?

• “This means all education practitioners, policy makers and teachers, should be interested

in research and knowledge production and see themselves as participants in the field of educational research broadly defined. Educational professionals should be research informed, but also research-informing. The other side of this is that education researchers located in universities and research institutes should also have an educative

• r “pedagogical disposition” (Lingard & Renshaw, 2009), that is, they should have

commitment to improving both policy and practice and disseminating their research findings.” (Lingard & Gale, 2010, p. 23)

Could this be extended to students? (Anderson & Graham,

• 2016; Harrison et al., 2016)

If so, what might the levers of change (

• Senge, 1989)be to realise this? I argue, evaluation systems

(as a form of social action Wilcox and Gray (1996)), and a local inclusive leadership (Ainscow & Messiou, 2018) a leadership that avoids manipulative and tokenistic approaches (Quinn & Quinn, 2016).

Teachers are uniquely positioned to elicit the voice and participation of young people in

• relation to their learning.

Necessity to be consumers and producers of research done by and with, not just on,

• young people they teach.

Reflections on design: this was led by young people

The prepositional perspectives enrich data and decision

• making for improvement

Young people

• consulted about research ➔ collaborate with adults in research ➔ have
• wnership of the research (Groundwater-Smith, Dockett & Bottrell, 2015: 63)

Young people = co

• researchers (research design; data generation; data analysis; reporting) >

data sources

Are schools

• ‘sites where children learn about and practice their rights’

(Urinboyev, Wickenberg, & Leo, 2016: 523)? Link to well

• being (Anderson & Graham, 2016; de Róiste, Kelly, Molcho, Gavin, &

Nic Gabhainn, 2012) Inclusive (

• Ainscow, 2006; 2016; 2017)

a process of development that identified barriers

• need to remove these, and promote concern for presence and participation of all,
• particularly those who underachieve, are marginalised or excluded (e.g. language barriers;

special educational needs; disability)

So, How Was School Today – findings

• Participatory research gives young people a voice
• Confirmatory
• Inspectorate analysis
• Teachers practices
• Assessment: Provision of feedback; Selecting and designing formal assessments of

student learning

• Pedagogy: Leading discussions with even participation; Diagnosing particular

common patterns of student thinking and development in a subject-matter domain (active learning)

• Beliefs ≠ practices of ‘good’ teaching (Devine, Fahie, McGillycuddy, 2013), certainly

not young people’s experience of practices impacting on their learning positively : important for school improvement and evaluation

Possibilities for evaluation

• Questionnaire from project: potential of participatory research.
• Linking participation and voice to:
• School improvement practices (involved > alienated) (Sussman, 2015);
• Observation of teachers’ pedagogical practices so they are more likely to be seen as

important and become more commonplace in the everyday social processes inside the classroom in schools (i.e. not just hearing voice in formal structures but seeing it as engaging in dialogue with young people about their learning in practicing teaching);

• Leadership: administrative and student leadership – collective vision in establishing

school evaluation agendas (i.e. feed-forward, as well as feedback?).

• Accountability and improvement functions.
• Preference for student learning as thinking, doing, discussing, and

collaborating emerged – dialogic teaching and learning (Alexander, 2017; Mercer & Littleton, 2007).

Possibilities for leadership

Successful leadership is both instructional and transformational (Day, Gu &

• Sammons, 2016; Day & Gurr, 2014).

Necessity to ask bolder questions about how to improve, to develop agency for

• participation in the identification of leadership and management needs and

priorities of the school. Voice is important, so too are the silences and absences (Fielding, in Burke and Grosvenor, 2015). Evidence

• informed leadership: young people’s perspective becomes one piece of

the evidence jigsaw. The necessity to give participation due weight: Leaders must not only focus on

• rights; they must enact their responsibility to work to have structures for young

people’s voice to be heard; for it to be listened to; for dialogue to occur with it; and ultimately, oblige practical action on what young people say about (what affects) their learning. One such way is through feedback (Lundy,

• 2018)

If something is better than nothing, what should that something be?

• ‘Children often complain that they give their views and then do not hear

anything back; this conveys the message that their views were not taken

• seriously. Providing feedback to the children involved is thus a strategy of

choice when it comes to encouraging meaningful child participation.. there is often little detail as to what the feedback should contain, when it should happen and so on. In practice, it often takes the form of a child-friendly version summarizing children’s views and/or a thank you letter.’ (Lundy, 2018, p. 349)

• ‘Participation is always imperfect: there could always be more time, more

resources and more children involved. If we classify less than perfect participation as tokenistic, hence intimidating generations of decision- makers from attempting to engage at all or directly, then we are shutting the door to the engagement of millions of children on countless issues affecting them.’ (Lundy, 2018, p. 351)

Feedback should be…(from Lundy, 2018)

• Engage with details and explain their response. Provide

answers to questions. Detail what was (dis)agreed with; who is taking it forward; what was surprising?

Full

• Ensure the responses can be understood
• e.g. school evaluations/ improvement plans/ how their

views are taken seriously

Friendly (child)

Decision

• making at the policy and state levels are

typically slow, but children grow up fast Acknowledge involvement, initial progress, next steps

• Fast
• ‘on-going conversation’ rather than one off ‘smash and

grabs’, lasting for the duration of a policy/ decision- making process of respectful dialogue

Followed-up

Reflections

• Which findings or reflections from ‘So How Was School Today?’ do

you think chime with your experience?

• Which of the concepts introduced give you ‘second thoughts’ about a

policy or practice you may have recently or be currently engaged in?

• Are there possibilities you now recognise that you previously had not

through which voice and participation could perhaps be more highly leveraged? What changes in mindset as well as structures might be required?