The UN convention on the rights of the child assures children the right to participate in areas they are affected by (United Nations, 1990). Local school laws, such as the one from the canton of Zürich in Switzerland, determine that schools are obliged to give students the opportunity to participate in the sense of having a voice and taking part (Kantonsrat Zürich, 2005). Numerous authors offer definitions about student participation and use different terms for the phenomenon, such as student or pupil participation, voice, engagement and having a say (e.g. Banneyer et al., 2015; Keeffe & Andrews, 2015; Quinn & Owen, 2014; Rüedi, 2017; Toshalis & Nakkula, 2012). For this contribution, we follow Jaun (1999, p. 266), who defines student participation as the exertion of influence of children and youth about planning and decision processes in areas they are affected by, using suitable forms and methods.

Numerous models explicate student participation and link it to concrete practices (e.g. Hart, 1992; Lundy, 2007; Oser & Biedermann, 2006). One of the approaches that not only focus on school but especially on classroom practice is the German approach of Peschel (2012) towards ‘open classrooms.’ He distinguishes between openness or freedom regarding organizational aspects, methods, content, social interactions and personal affairs.

Due to the often observed gap between regulations and practices (Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002), we cannot act on the assumption that student participation is implemented in the way the UN convention on the rights of the child (United Nations, 1990) or local school laws (e.g. Kantonsrat Zürich, 2005) intend. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate how student participation is implemented in practice.

At this point, the planned contribution starts. It investigates how student participation is implemented in class. The contribution pursues the following research questions: How often do students participate and what are the fields of student participation (e.g. organizational aspects, methods, contents, …)?; Are there differences in the perception of teachers and students?; How does participation in class change within one year?; How does student participation actually take place?

To answer the research questions, data from the research project PasSe (strengthen participation – improve school) will be retrieved. The center of school improvement of the Zurich University of Teacher Education collects and analyzes data about student participation in five Swiss schools since 2015. Qualitative and quantitative data from two measuring points are available. For this contribution, quantitative data will be analyzed descriptively and bivariately; qualitative data will be analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2014).

The contribution shows how student participation is perceived and implemented respectively, in the classes of two elementary schools (including kindergarten), two junior high schools and one comprehensive school (from kindergarten to grade 9) with a total of 760 students and 150 teachers and other adults working there. The results lead to implications about a broad implementation of student participation in class. Based on the example of student participation in Switzerland, comparison to student participation in other countries can be made. Discussions with other researchers and interested people can provide important contributions, as well as comparisons to existing studies.

For this contribution, qualitative and quantitative research methods will be combined. Survey data from two measuring points with 760 students from upper elementary school and junior high school as well as 150 teachers and other adults (working in all grades) are analyzed using descriptive (e.g. means and standard deviations) and bivariate statistics (e.g. correlations). Regression analyses are also possible. Qualitative data from interviews, group discussions and participant observations are analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2014). The mixed methods design enables the presentation of both the results concerning the whole school, to give an overview, and examples of the concrete practice. Furthermore, this design allows the results from the self-perception of the students and adults in the schools (survey data, interviews, group discussions) and the external perspective of the researchers (participant observation data) to be combined.

Preliminary results show that student participation takes place in class only rarely. This result applies to all investigated fields (participation concerning organizational aspects, methods, content and social interactions). Both students and teachers report this perception, although differences in the perception of the two parties can be observed in the quantitative data: Teachers perceive a little more student participation than the students do. Results based on the qualitative content analysis of interviews, group discussions and participant observation records show that students get the chance to join the discussion about where they want to sit in class and sometimes even where they want to put their table. Furthermore, they get participation opportunities in choosing songs in music class or choosing topics in other subjects. In one of the schools, students can choose between different kinds of weekly “to do” lists: They either define their to-do’s by themselves and ask the teachers if they agree, or they get the weekly workload from their teachers and decide when they accomplish which task, or they do not get a weekly workload from the teacher but a daily one. So, all in all, quantitative data report little student participation, while several examples for concrete participative situations were observed or mentioned in the qualitative part of the study.

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