Alison Cook-Sather

Authorizing Students’ Perspectives: Toward Trust, Dialogue, and Change in Education

This article argues for attending to the perspectives of those most directly affected by, but least often consulted about, educational policy and practice: students. The argument for authorizing student perspectives runs counter to U.S. reform efforts, which have been based on adults’ ideas about the conceptualization and practice of education. This article outlines and critiques a variety of recent attempts to listen to students, including constructivist and critical pedagogies, postmodern and poststructural feminisms, educational researchers’ and social critics’ work, and recent developments in the medical and legal realms, almost all of which continue to unfold within and reinforce adults’ frames of reference. This discussion contextualizes what the author argues are the twin challenges of authorizing student perspectives: a change in mindset and changes in the structures in educational relationships and institutions.

Sound, Presence, and Power: "Student Voice" in Educational Research and Reform

Abstract Every way of thinking is both premised on and generative of a way of naming that reflects particular underlying convictions. Over the last 15 years, a way of thinking has reemerged that strives to reposition students in educational research and reform. Best documented in Australia, Canada, England, and the United States, this way of thinking is premised on the following convictions: that young people have unique perspectives on learning, teaching, and schooling; that their insights warrant not only the attention but also the responses of adults; and that they should be afforded opportunities to actively shape their education. Although these convictions mean different things to different people and take different forms in practice, a single term has emerged to capture a range of activities that strive to reposition students in educational research and reform: “student voice.” In this discussion the author explores the emergence of the term “student voice,” identifies underlying premises signaled by two particular words associated with the term, “rights” and “respect,” and explores the many meanings of a word that surfaces repeatedly across discussions of student voice efforts but refers to a wide range of practices: “listening.” The author offers this discussion not as an exhaustive or definitive analysis but rather with the goal of looking across discussions of work that advocates, enacts, and critically analyzes the term “student voice.”

Students as co‐creators of teaching approaches, course design, and curricula: implications for academic developers

Within higher education, students’ voices are frequently overlooked in the design of teaching approaches, courses and curricula. In this paper we outline the theoretical background to arguments for including students as partners in pedagogical planning processes. We present examples where students have worked collaboratively in design processes, along with the beneficial outcomes of these examples. Finally, we focus on some of the implications and opportunities for academic developers of proposing collaborative approaches to pedagogical planning.

‘Change based on what students say’: preparing teachers for a paradoxical model of leadership

This article discusses how a radical approach to teacher education encourages both pre‐service teachers and high school students to embrace a paradoxical model of leadership. A project that positions high school students as teachers and learners in an undergraduate secondary teacher certification course challenges pre‐service teachers to learn to teach by listening to high school students, and it challenges students to learn to speak and take action within their school lives. As participant reflections illustrate, this project enacts the paradoxical model it advocates: it contradicts received notions of leadership as hierarchical, top‐down, and synonymous with a single person—in this case, the teacher—in a position of authority; it challenges both pre‐service teachers and students to embrace the seeming internal contradiction of being at once followers and leaders; and it represents, on a larger scale, resistance to the current climate and predominant acceptance in the USA of federally mandated standards and scripted approaches to teaching and learning.

Resisting the Impositional Potential of Student Voice Work: Lessons for liberatory educational research from poststructuralist feminist critiques of critical pedagogy

Early 21st-century cautions regarding student voice work in educational research echo in striking ways some poststructuralist feminist critiques of critical pedagogies that proliferated in the early 1990s. Both warn against totalizing, undifferentiated notions of and responses to oppressed, marginalized, and/or disempowered individuals or groups while sharing a commitment to the encouragement of critical analyses of existing social conditions (within and beyond classrooms) and the advocacy of changing dominant arrangements of power and participation. In this article, I explore how conceptions of and cautions regarding two key foci of liberatory efforts—identity and voice—throw into relief the impositional potential of those efforts. I offer the conceptual framework provided by “translation” to support a rethinking of students’ and researchers’ identities, roles, and participation in educational research as one of many necessarily ongoing efforts to resist the impositional potential of student voice work.

Movements of Mind: The Matrix , Metaphors, and Re-Imagining Education

Document Type Article Version Postprint Publication Title Teachers College Record Volume 105 Publication Date 2003 Abstract Using the popular movie The Matrix to evoke both metaphors for human existence and models for teaching and learning, this article revisits arguments made by educators, philosophers, linguists, and anthropologists that metaphors govern our ways of perceiving, naming, and acting in the world, whether we are aware of this phenomenon or not. Building on this premise and through an examination of two metaphors that have dominated notions of and approaches to education in the United States, the article invites readers to make conscious the metaphors that inform our thoughts and actions,  Download

Students as Learners and Teachers: Taking Responsibility, Transforming Education, and Redefining Accountability.

Abstract As has been the case throughout the history of education in the United States, the current structures and practices of U.S. schools and colleges are informed by particular ideals regarding the potential of education. Through this comparative descriptive analysis, I argue that a major reason why these ideals have rarely been realized is the way that students are positioned in educational institutions, dialogues, and reform. A preliminary argument for rethinking how we conceptualize student role and responsibility frames my description and comparison of two programs, one that involves secondary students in the preparation of high school teachers and one that involves college students in the professional development of college faculty. I then draw on the perspectives of student participants across these two programs to address a series of educational ideals that span K–12 and college contexts: inspiring lasting learning, celebrating humanity and diversity, and engaging in meaningful assessment. I designed the programs that are the focus of my analysis with the goal of improving teacher preparation and teaching, but as I discuss in this article, they are proving to be promising models for pursuing what may be a more encompassing possibility: fostering in students a sense of and capacity for responsibility in ways that not only address existing educational ideals but that also point to both more transformative and more achievable notions of education and accountability than those currently in place.

From traditional accountability to shared responsibility: the benefits and challenges of student consultants gathering midcourse feedback in college classrooms

The explicit purpose of gathering feedback in college classes is to improve those courses, usually along the lines of structure, organisation, pace, or some other aspect of the course over which the professor typically has control. A potential outcome that is less immediately obvious is the shift that can take place regarding who is responsible and in what ways for the analysis and revision of pedagogical practices at the college level. In this article, I take as a foundation for my discussion the premises of new wave student voice work, and I describe a project through which students were positioned as consultants who gathered midcourse feedback for faculty members. I analyse how those student consultants supported faculty members in revising not only their courses but also their relationships with students – both student consultants and students enrolled in the courses.

What Would Happen If We Treated Students as Those With Opinions That Matter? The Benefits to Principals and Teachers of Supporting Youth Engagement in School

The author discusses a project that a fords high school principals an opportunity to create collaborative relationships between members of their school communities and college-based teacher education programs. In its 13 years, this collaboration has been shown to increase student and teacher engagement: Students gain perspective on what goes into teaching and learning, develop a voice to talk about the experiences they have and would like to have in school, and work toward creating more productive schooling experiences, and teachers are a forded time to engage in conversations with students about what matters to and a fects them and to strengthen their relationships with students. The author o fers concrete recommendations to principals on initiating partnerships with colleges, universities, or departments of teacher education, integrating such partnerships into the culture of their schools, and recruiting and rewarding teachers committed to student voice and engagement.

Student-faculty partnership in explorations of pedagogical practice: a threshold concept in academic development

Student-faculty partnerships position students as informants, participants, and change agents in collaboration with faculty members. Enacting one form of such collaboration, Bryn Mawr College’s SaLT program pairs faculty members and undergraduate students in explorations of pedagogical practice. The program provides both context and case study for this form of Student-faculty partnership as a threshold concept in academic development. Like all threshold concepts, the notion of Student-faculty partnership is troublesome, transformative, irreversible, and integrative. This article draws on faculty reflections to explore what constitutes this threshold, the insights and practices that are possible if faculty cross it, and implications for academic developers.