Although it might have long been at play at micro-level in teaching practices, in recent decades European institutions are actively promoting in a variety of ways what is commonly referred as “student voice work” as part of the everyday functioning of European Higher Education (HE) institutions.

On the one hand, student voice is acknowledged as an opportunity to empower students to participate meaningfully and collaboratively in improving their educational and learning experience in higher education. On the other hand, student voice is identified as key to make higher education institution accountable and to improve their quality according to a New Public Management (NPM) agenda (Capano et al., 2016; Gunter et al., 2016).

Within the Italian context, student voice work has become a relevant feature of Italian Higher Education institutions in the 2000s and, in particular, with the institution of an operating national system of evaluation (2013). Indeed, while boosting the academic system to increase research productivity, recent policies are also asking universities to be accountable toward their students (Neave, 2012). A new field of policy activity has emerged creating new networks of relationships, which are contributing to reconfigure academic practices as more attentive to student experiences, degree completion, drop-out and “study-success”, didactic innovations (Romito, 2020). 

In this context, and similarly to other European countries, today Italian higher education institutions provide platforms and instrument for student to have their voice heard.

As the institutionalization of student voice work has been consubstantial to the recrafting of the Italian HE through a NPM agenda, concerns arise on if, and how, student voice has been co-opted into a neo managerial discourse. Research carried out in other countries have shown how, instead of constituting a space where broader participatory and inclusive instrument aimed at reaching transformational outcomes (Seale, 2010), student voice work might function as governmental technologies subjectifying students as consumers (Thiel, 2019; Mendes and Hammet, 2020). Moreover, imbricated within a managerial discourse, student voices – often constrained to operate within ‘feedback loops’ (Young and Jerome, 2020) – become instrument enacting and enforcing a logic of competition among HE institutions, Departments, Degrees and teachers themselves (Ball, 2003, 2012).

This contribution is based on an ongoing research involving students representatives and students unions in the attempt to provide knowledge useful for student voice work to promote inclusion, democracy and truthful participation in their learning experience (Fielding, 2004; Cook-Sather, 2006). By focusing in particular on an in-depth qualitative analysis on how Joint Teacher-Student Commissions operate across different contexts and fields of study we use Callon’s sociology of translation (Callon, 1984) and the policy enactment approach (Ball, Magruire and Braun, 2012) to provide an understanding of: a) how student voice work has being problematised at institutional level through an analysis of policy documents, regulations and policy instruments (Lascoumes and Le Gales, 2007) aimed at making it operational; b) how different interpretations and translations emerges based on contextual and networks dynamics; and c) we will particularly point out controversies to show which are the enabling condition for the emergence of problematisation of students voice practices opposing the managerial approach described above and, more specifically, to account for students’ capacity to leverage existing structures and policy instrument to express their priorities and catalyse change. 

Within Italian HE institutions, representation of students is foreseen in different bodies such as the Academic Senate (at least 1 student or more depending on the size of the student population), the Administration Council (2 students), the Evaluation Unit (at least 1 student), the Quality Assurance Council (at least 1 students), the Joint Teacher-Student Commission for each degree course (3-4 students). Moreover, students are asked to provide feedback (mostly in the form of questionnaires) at the end of each teaching and there is a growing (although still limited) attention of individual academics to create spaces for students’ voice(s) in their everyday teaching practices to improve the learning process (Fedeli et al., 2016). The research is being carried out through in-depth qualitative interviews with students and academics participating to sites or platforms where student voices have – at least formally – space to be heard. Sampling procedure have taken into consideration two axis of differentiation: the first one pertain the organizational level at which student voice work is enacted (from the central academic bodies – Academic Senate, Administration Council, Quality Assurance Council - to study courses – Joint-Teachers Commission; the second one pertain to disciplinary areas based on the hypothesis that different disciplinary histories, cultures, habituses might shape the way in which student voice work is enacted. In particular the presented contribution will focus on about 20 interviews carried out with participant to 10 Joint-Teachers Commissions among which 5 pertain to the humanistic and 5 to the scientific-technological field.

Preliminary results suggest the need to develop further paths of research in two main directions. First, interviews have not shown, so far, the existence of clear differentiations in the way through which student voice work is enacted based on disciplinary cultures or habitus. On the contrary, there is need to investigate more carefully the role played by the histories of specific institutions, departments, and study courses. Specifically local institutional histories seem to shape the attitudes of teachers and of those enacting student voice work. However, more research is needed to provide a sociological understanding and interpretation of these difference. Second, interviews reveal how in the large majority of cases, student voice has been co-opted into a neo managerial discourse where students’ mobilization is required to accomplish merely bureaucratic accountability task. In a most cases, student voice is heard but recognized only on a formal level. This is particularly true when higher organizational levels are taken into consideration. At the level of study course, interviews allow on the contrary to point out how certain circumstances allow new problematizations of student voice work to emerge where students have the capacity to leverage existing policy instrument to express their priorities and catalyse change.

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