Across Europe, school self-evaluation (SSE) has become a central policy instrument for quality assurance, accountability, and school improvement. Yet dominant SSE models largely rely on comprehensive indicator frameworks and performance metrics, often sidelining the lived experiences of students and teachers. This proposal addresses this limitation by examining how a focused, participatory, and narrative-based approach to school self-evaluation can operate as a democratic and advocacy-oriented policy tool.

The study is guided by three research questions:

1. How do students and teachers articulate their everyday school experiences when engaged in participatory forms of reflection?

2. Which shared critical need areas come up across student and teacher narratives?

3. How can a focused, qualitative form of school self-evaluation contribute to participatory governance, shared meaning-making, and policy advocacy within and beyond the school?

The conceptual framework brings together three strands of literature. First, the study draws on participatory and democratic education theories, particularly research on student and teacher voice, agency, and co-construction in school improvement processes. Second, it engages critically with school self-evaluation and accountability literature, highlighting the limits of technocratic and managerial approaches that prioritise measurement over meaning. Third, it adopts a policy instruments perspective, drawing on McDonnell and Elmore’s (1987) typology and Fowler’s (2013) work, to conceptualise school self-evaluation as a hortatory (discursive) policy instrument.

Rather than framing SSE as a comprehensive assessment of all school domains, this study proposes a focused self-evaluation model organised around shared priority areas identified by students and teachers themselves. This approach enables schools to surface structural vulnerabilities while keeping evaluation processes manageable, meaningful, and politically actionable. Narrative and ethnographic data are used not to rank performance but to generate a shared language around needs, tensions, and possibilities for change.

Within this framework, school self-evaluation is understood not merely as an internal improvement mechanism but as a discursive space for collective reflection and advocacy. By positioning students and teachers as co-constructors of school knowledge and improvement priorities, rather than passive sources of data, the model reframes SSE as a democratic practice with policy relevance.

The European and international significance of the study lies in its contribution to ongoing debates on student participation, democratic school governance, and context-sensitive evaluation. Although empirically grounded in a case from Türkiye, the issues identified, exam-oriented schooling and time management pressures; student well-being; access to basic care conditions such as hygiene and nutrition; guidance and counselling support; school safety; and systemic pressures experienced by teachers, resonate across many European education systems. The study therefore offers transferable insights for rethinking school self-evaluation beyond compliance-driven accountability models.

The study adopts a qualitative, participatory research design informed by ethnographic approaches, focusing on students’ and teachers’ everyday school experiences. Data were produced through an iterative, two-phase research process conducted with volunteer secondary school students and teachers. In the initial phase, one student focus group and one teacher focus group were conducted. These exploratory discussions aimed to surface key themes, shared concerns, and priority areas related to everyday school life, including care conditions, safety, guidance, and exam-related pressures. Insights from this phase informed the design of the subsequent data collection process. In the second phase, the study expanded to include three additional student focus groups and one additional teacher focus group, all of which were combined with participatory workshops. In total, the study involved four student focus groups with 40 students and two teacher focus groups with 15 teachers. The workshop format enabled participants to move beyond verbal discussion and engage in collective reflection through structured activities, allowing experiences to be articulated, negotiated, and collectively examined. The empirical material consists of focus group conversations centred on everyday school experiences; short oral and written narratives produced by participants; researcher observations and field notes; and visual materials generated during workshop activities. In addition, some participants chose to share experiences they were unable or unwilling to articulate during group discussions through follow-up audio recordings or written messages sent to the researcher after the sessions. Similarly, during the workshop phase, a number of participants preferred to complete and submit materials produced in response to the prompt “What would you like to say to a decision-maker about the issue you selected?” individually after the sessions. These materials were integrated into the dataset as supplementary narrative accounts, allowing participants greater control over the timing, form, and conditions of their contributions. Data analysis follows a thematic and narrative analytic approach, focusing on the identification of shared critical need areas across student and teacher accounts rather than individual-level assessment. Analytical attention is given to how participants frame problems, assign meaning to everyday school practices, and articulate tensions related to exam-oriented schooling, time management pressures, care conditions, and school climate. Ethical considerations included informed consent, voluntary participation, and the anonymisation of all data. The participatory design sought to minimise extractive research dynamics by ensuring that data generation processes also functioned as spaces for dialogue, recognition, and collective sense-making.

The study shows that both students’ and teachers’ experiences of schooling are shaped by structural, relational, and care-related conditions. Across participant groups, shared critical need areas consistently emerged around exam-oriented schooling and time management pressures; student well-being; access to basic care conditions such as hygiene and nutrition; guidance and counselling support; school safety; and systemic pressures experienced by teachers. Regarding hygiene and nutrition, students report persistent challenges related to affordability, access, and adequacy. While some schools are described as physically clean, recurring concerns include the lack of basic supplies in toilets, the high cost of drinking water, and limited access to affordable and nutritionally balanced food. Comparisons between school-based options and external alternatives highlight inequalities linked to pricing and portion sizes. Calls for greater transparency in school budgets suggest that these issues are experienced as matters of fairness and accountability. In relation to time management and exam-oriented schooling, pressure is experienced through rigid schedules, early start times, uneven assessment planning, and limited time for rest, creativity, and personal interests. Although extracurricular activities exist, sustained participation becomes difficult during periods of intensified assessment. In selective and specialised schools, exam-oriented structures are experienced as constraining autonomy and motivation. With respect to guidance, safety, and school climate, students point to uneven access to counselling and support, often relying on individual teachers rather than formal guidance services. Concerns related to trust, informal hierarchies among students, and limited channels for voicing concerns shape experiences of belonging and participation. Students’ expressed desire to continue these discussions indicates that such participatory spaces are both rare and necessary. Methodologically, the findings demonstrate the value of a focused, qualitative approach to school self-evaluation that positions students and teachers as co-constructors of school knowledge and improvement priorities and generates shared language relevant for school evaluation and policy discussion.

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