Session Information
26 SES 11 B, Policy Context and Governance in Educational Leadership
Paper Session
Contribution
The work presented here is a proposal that focuses on schools that serve through Professional Learning Communities (PLC) that show trajectories of successful innovation and are recognised as ‘schools that transform’ their reality, culture and practice in order to respond to current challenges and improve their educational results. From this, an interest arises in expanding knowledge about the dynamics that can be carried out in schools to involve students in school governance from a child-friendly perspective. With this emphasis, two questions were formulated:
1. What kind of leadership creates spaces for real student participation in school governance?
2. What strategies can be implemented in the school to give students a voice in decision-making and change?
This study is part of the project ‘Extended professional learning communities and collaborative networks for sustainable development and inclusion: new governance and social capital’ (Ref: B-SEJ-234-UGR20). Funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
Theoretical framework
Student participation is increasingly a global phenomenon as stated in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Locating student voice in schools and classrooms - governed by entrenched traditional student-teacher roles - means that student influence in decision-making remains a problematic issue.
Previous studies have shown that giving students a voice is a way of valuing their interests and motivations, encouraging their active participation in school decision-making, and moving towards educational change and improvement by (Barker, 2018; Hardie, 2015; Lucena et al., 2021; Sargeant & Gillett-Swan, 2019) sharing school responsibilities.
However, it is common to find studies that approach the teaching profession and leadership in education in terms of student learning from a colonising and despotic perspective, i.e. for children, but without them. Several authors have already denounced the fact that the impact on learning and the improvement of education is sought, but the voice of students is not taken into account (Rudduck & McIntyre, 2007; Tonucci, 2015).
When we talk about learner voice, we are referring to any initiative that favours and encourages student participation in schools, as well as school experiences with highly variable pedagogical scope and meaning (John-Akinola et al., 2014; Susinos & Ceballos, 2012).
Faced with this reality and in order to guarantee the exercise of children's rights in schools and to transform the traditional style of governance, a horizontal, distributed and successful leadership is needed (Rincón-Gallardo et al., 2019). A leadership that is capable of responding appropriately to the demands of specific situations and that will depend on the ability to take advantage of the elements that are given to it to build a joint school vision (Bush, 2018).
For this vision to be extended to the whole community, the leader must bring trust and encourage good communication practices among members (Robinson, 2019). The driver for change must be collaboration, mutual support and trust in staff, in what Hargreaves & O'Connor (2020) have called ‘collaborative professionalism (when teaching together means learning from everyone)’.
Schools that take the Professional Learning Communities model, students, school leaders and teachers work together as partners to make change decisions and co-produce the pedagogy and curriculum of the school, as well as the relationship dynamics in the school (Prenger et al., 2021).
Method
A case study was intentionally selected for its value and relevance to the research, according to the following criteria: • Convenience: participation in educational innovation projects. • Contextual: belonging to schools located in vulnerable contexts at risk of educational and social exclusion (cataloguing of the Delegation of Education and the Andalusian Agency for Educational Evaluation). • Content perspective: immersion in a process of school transformation focused on the involvement of students as protagonists of their learning and change. This is the Juan Pablo I educational school (Valderrubio, Spain) which provides infant education (3-6 years), primary education (7-11 years) and lower secondary education (12-14 years). The main value of the school model, proposed by the management, is to recover the ideas and thoughts of the pedagogue Paulo Freire by considering education as a practice of freedom. The management wants to encourage the participation of children in the daily life of the school in order to give them the opportunity to become agents of change in the school and its community. Among its recognitions are the national award of RED learning and servicies as a school promoting health and healthy habits in the locality (2019) and the European Health Promotion Award 2020. Since 2014 it has been a centre promoting positive coexistence by the Ministry of Education of the Andalusian Regional Government, promoting a model of coexistence based on emotional intelligence and interpersonal relationships. The fieldwork was carried out during two consecutive school years. Three members of the management team and eight teachers were interviewed. Three pupils also participated in a focus group. The interviews were accompanied by field observations and diary entries throughout the research. The analysis of the information was developed through a recurrent process of reflexive deepening (Kelchtermans & Piot, 2013) and dialectical validation until information saturation and collective consensus on meanings, interpretations and conclusions were reached. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to analyse the data obtained. Themes and categories were constructed with previous categories from the literature and emerging categories from the data (discourse from interviews, participant observation and subsequent discussions about these materials between interviewers and researchers). N-Vivo 11 software was used to support data management and analysis.
Expected Outcomes
In order to transform the governance of the school, a set of educational strategies and practices were developed that were made possible through distributed and transformative pedagogical leadership and teacher collaboration. It was observed that changes and improvements were made by the management team that allowed the development of a series of actions to give students a voice in their learning and education. Creating a space for children's participation was a key aspect for the management team; both in the process of transforming the school and in order to involve students in the life of the school, in their learning and to improve their achievements. Three levels of student participation in school decision-making were identified: organisational level, curricular level and social transformation level (Figure 1) ‘Children's Council’ has been a key participatory body for transforming school governance. We conclude that the results provide empirical evidence on four areas that have been key to fostering student participation in school decision-making: 1) an expanded perspective of school leadership, towards models of distributed and transformative leadership; 2) the class assembly, delegates and the Children's Council; 3) a greater presence of students in the school space and coexistence relations; and 4) a pedagogical model that focuses on project work and Service-Learning that includes community service actions. These results have various implications for the educational community, as they invite us to reflect on the great challenges facing the school of the 21st century, in which the voice of the teacher and the management team is not the only one, nor the strongest one. The organisational and pedagogical strategies and dynamics adopted by the school studied are presented as proposals which, in line with the contributions of Schultz (2009), make it possible to move towards schools in which the multiplicity of voices is encouraged, whose pupils can learn and practice the dialogue needed for democratic citizenship.
References
Barker, S. K. (2018). Student Voice to Improve Instruction: Leading Transformation of a School System. Electronic Theses and Dissertations. ACU. Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa Bush, T. (2018.) Research on educational leadership and management: Broadening the base. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 46(3), 359–361. Hardie, E. (2015). When students drive improvement. Educational Leadership, 72(9), 92-96. Hargreaves, A. & O’Connor, M. T. (2020). Profesionalismo colaborativo. Cuando enseñar juntos supone el aprendizaje de todos. Ediciones Morata. John-Akinola, Y. O., Gavin, A., O’Higgins, S. E. & Gabhainn, S. N. (2014). Taking part in school life: views of children. Health Education, 114(1), 20-42. https://doi.org/10.1108/HE-02-2013-0007 Kelchtermans, G. & Piot, L. (2013). Living the janus head: Conceptualizing leaders and leadership in schools in the 21st century. M.A. Flores et al. (Eds.), Back to the Future: Legacies, Continuities and Changes in Educational Policy, Practice and Research (pp. 93–114). Sense Publishers. Lucena, C., López, A., Domingo, J. & Cruz, C. (2021). Alberto’s life story: transforming a disadvantaged school by appreciating the child’s voice. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 3(2), 12- 24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2021.1893286 Prenger, R., Poortman, C. L. & Handelzalts, A. (2021). Professional learning networks: From teacher learning to school improvement?. Journal of Educational Change, 22, 13–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-020-09383-2 Rincón-Gallardo, S., Villagra, C., Mellado, M. & Aravena, O. (2019). Construir culturas de colaboración eficaz en redes de escuelas chilenas: Una teoría de acción. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Educativos, 49(1), 241–272. Robinson, V. (2019). Hacia un fuerte liderazgo centrado en el estudiante: afrontar el reto del cambio. Revista Eletrônica de Educação, 13(1), 123-145. https://doi.org/ 10.14244/198271993068 Rudduck, J. & McIntyre, D. (2007). Improving learning through consulting pupils. Routledge. Sargeant, J. & Gillett-Swan, J. K. (2019). Voice-inclusive practice (VIP): A charter for authentic student engagement. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 27(1), 122-139. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718182-02701002 Schultz, K. (2009). Rethinking classroom participation. Listening to silent voices. Teachers College Press. Susinos Rada, T. & Ceballos López, N. (2012). Voz del alumnado y presencia participativa en la vida escolar: apuntes para una cartografía de la voz del alumnado en la mejora educativa. Revista de educación, 359, 24-44. http://hdl.handle.net/11162/95224 Tonucci, F. (2015). La ciudad de los niños. Grao.
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