Introduction

As a result of both an increase in the number and diversity of students and a wider and higher number of institutions offering a degree in higher education, much research has been focused on what has been called the ‘student voice’ although this concept has remained undertheorised (Felten et al., 2013; McLeod, 2011; Seale, 2009).

In her work, Seale (2009) pointed that much of the work around ‘student voice’ seemed to make implicit connections between students’ feedback and reflective practices and the improvement of teaching practices and curriculum development, there being an assumption that students’ feedback would produce changes in curricular and teaching practices as a consequence of staff and lecturers’ reflections on this feedback and a disposition to promote those changes.

The aim of this papaer is to examine the current state of the art of the concept of student voice in higher education. Through a systematic literature review, it aims to identify the main patterns of publication around this concept in the last three decades (1992-2021). In addition, it identifies the conceptualisations underpinning the concept, the main methodologies that have been used to investigate it, and the contexts in which student voice has been explored.

Student voice

McLeod provides an overview of the polysemic of the concept ‘voice’ which can be associated to “identity or agency, or even power… it can be the site of authentic reflection and insight or a radical source for counter narratives… can be a code word for representing difference, or connote a democratic politics of participation and inclusion, or be the expression of an essentialized group identity” (2011: 181).

            In higher education, according to Seale (2009), conceptualisations about student voice are rather undeveloped. According to the author, ‘student voice’ is usually conceived as feedback provided by students which help lecturers and academic planners to reflect on and improve teaching practices and curricula. In turn, McLeod identifies four different types of uses of student voices in education: “(i) voice – as strategy (to achieve empowerment, transformation, equality); voice as-participation (in learning, in democratic processes); voice-as-right (to be heard, to have a say); and voice-as-difference (to promote inclusion, respect diversity, indicate equity)”. (2011: 181). These distinctions are especially important in a context of diversity, inclusion, respect of differences and in promoting participatory and democratic processes among young learners (McLeod, op. cit.).

Furthermore, itis worth to mention here five different types of roles that students’ voices can take on in higher education according to Seale (2009): (a) student as stakeholder; b) student as consumer; (c) student as teacher facilitator; d) student as evaluator or informant; and e) student as story-teller. According to the author, these roles are not necessarily explicit in the literature, and they frequently involve uneasy relationships between students, lecturers and higher education institutions since these last two usually deploy more power. Also a view of student voice as promoting transformation, participation and empowerment on the part of students and their learning has been mainly studied in relation to the concept of ‘pedagogical partnership’ and participation and transformation of students as learners (Cook-Sather et. Al., 2021). Such focus has left aside other dimensions and roles that students may play in higher education (for example, in governance (Klemencic, 2020), in activist initiatives, or in producing knowledge, among others).

Academic articles that dealt with the concept of ‘student voice’ were searched and filtered in three well-known databases: WoS core collection (WoScc), Scopus and SciELO between 1992 & 2021 (the research being conducted and updated between November 2021 and May 2022). Specifically, the search contained the following descriptors: (("student voices" OR "student voice") AND ("higher education" OR "college" OR "university")). The search was conducted in the title, abstract, and keywords of the articles. A total of 509 articles were identified: 171 WoScc articles, 330 Scopus articles, and 8 SciELO article. In order to address the aims of this study, first, a descriptive analysis of the articles was conducted, including: the number of articles published in the last 30 years; organised by country and region and by first author’ country affiliation; and language of publication. Second, the 25 highest cited articles published in the time span were further analysed to identify the main themes following Tight’s (2020) classification of research themes in higher education (namely, teaching and learning, course design, student experience, quality, system policy, institutional management, academic work and knowledge) and the type of article (conceptual or empirical). Also, the main topic addressed for each of these articles was identified.

The analysis of the selected articles shows that the concept of student voice is gaining traction in higher education especially in the last 12 years. Furthermore, most of the knowledge produced about ‘student voice’ comes from what has been called the ‘Global North’ and, specifically Anglo-Saxon countries such as the UK, the USA and Australia, three countries with highly marketised higher education systems. Therefore, there seem to be a lack of voices coming from other parts of the world. In examining the top 25 most cited articles, it was found: - That most articles (18) are empirical and qualitative. - There is overfocus on students’ learning experiences and course design in higher education is identified. In many of them, students are seen as sources of data about their learning or, at the most, sought to engage students so that they contributed to improving their learning. - A more active participation and engagement on the part of students is explored in articles about co-creating curricula and the scholarship of teaching and learning. However, initiatives remain being led by lecturers and planners. - This is also the case for articles that dealt with minority which mainly addressed the difficulties experienced by these students in their learning and academic contexts. - There is, therefore, a large silence regarding ‘student voice’ from a more radical or transformative perspective (Fielding, 2001) with a few exceptions. - Finally, another notable gap has to do with the scarce number of articles dealing with more structural variables that affect students’ voices and their agency. Implications for research on ‘student voice’ will be discussed during the presentation. Acknowledgement This study has been funded by ANID-FONDECYT 1200633

Cook-Sather, A., Allard, S., Marcovici, E., & Reynolds, B. (2021), ‘Fostering Agentic Engagement: Working toward Empowerment and Equity through Pedagogical Partnership’, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 15(2). Felten P., Bagg, J. Bumbry, M. Hill, J., Hornsby, K. Pratt, M. and Weller, S. (2013), ‘A call for expanding inclusive student engagement in SoTL’, Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1 (2), 63–74. Fielding, M. (2001), ‘Students as radical agents of change’, Journal of educational change 2 (2), 123-141. Klemencic, M. (2020) Student activism and organizations. In M. David, & M. Amey (Eds.) The SAGE encyclopaedia of higher education McLeod, J. (2011), ‘Student voice and the politics of listening in higher education’, Critical studies in education, 52 (2), 179-189. Seale, J. (2009), ‘Doing student voice work in higher education: An exploration of the value of participatory methods’, British Educational Research Journal, 36(6), 995-1015. Tight, M. (2020), Syntheses of higher education research: what we know. London: Bloomsbury Academic. This work was supported by ANID-Chile, Fondecyt Project 1200633.