Dana Mitra

Adults Advising Youth: Leading While Getting Out of the Way

Drawing on 3 years of qualitative data, this article broadens the concept of distributed leadership to include “student voice” in school decision making. Specifically, the article focuses on how adults can foster youth participation and leadership in school reform efforts. In this research, adults needed to work in partnership with youth conscientiously and continuously to develop patterns of interaction that aligned with the values of equitable relations. When adults did not strike a balance between support and letting go, the youth and adults often fell back into traditional teacher-student roles. The article identifies ways in which adults helped youth to move from the periphery to the core of group interactions, especially through a collective focus on developing shared norms, language, and skills.

Student Voice in School Reform: from Listening to Leadership

Although many high schools have struggled with how to improve academic outcomes, few have gone straight to the source and asked the students. In recent years, the term “student voice” increasingly has been discussed in the school reform literature as a potential avenue for improving both student outcomes and school restructuring (including Carbonaro & Gamoran, 2002; Fielding, 2002; Mitra, 2003; Rudduck & Flutter, 2000). The concept addresses a core issue that has been missing in the discussion of school reform—the dilemma of ownership. Simply put, student voice initiatives push schools to reevaluate who gets to define the problems of a school and who gets to try to improve them. Typical student activities in U.S. high schools include planning school dances and choosing a homecoming court. Student voice denotes considerably different opportunities for young people. It describes the many ways in which youth could actively participate in the school decisions that will shape their lives and the lives of their peers (Fielding, 2001; Goodwillie, 1993; Levin, 2000). At heart, the expectation behind student voice is that students are included in efforts that influence the core activities and structures of their school, yet student voice opportunities vary from school to school in terms of the expectations about youth capacity and the desire to foster youth leadership. In practice, student voice can entail youth sharing their opinions on problems and potential solutions. It can also entail young people collaborating with adults to address the problems in schools or youth taking the lead on seeking changes, such as improvements in teaching and learning, as well as school climate. Drawing on my previous research of three student voice initiatives in U.S. schools, this chapter conceptualizes how schools can engage students in school reform by providing detailed illustrations of what student voice looks like in practice. The examples illuminate the lessons learned by these groups and consider both the benefits of their chosen strategy to increase student voice and the difficulties of their chosen path toward reform. The first example will describe a minimal form of involvement of students—adults listening to students through interviews and surveys. Teachers and other school personnel

Student Voice in Elementary School Reform Examining Youth Development in Fifth Graders

The present research examines the developmental outcomes of elementary-aged students engaged in student voice efforts. Using a case study of fifth-grade girls, the authors compare their experiences to research examining secondary school. The authors find marked similarities in the growth of agency, belonging, competence—the ABCs of youth development. The authors also notice two additional dimensions—the need to engage in discourse that allows an exchange of diverse ideas while working toward a common goal. The authors also observed the emergence of civic efficacy, or a belief that one can make a difference in their social worlds. The authors also examine the contexts and conditions that support positive youth development in this case—scaffolding youth learning, establishing inquiry as the framework for teaching and learning, and establishing a clear vision of the school as a place that fosters student voice.

Collaborating with Students: Building Youth-Adult Partnerships in Schools.

This article examines the process of adults and students collaborating in school‐based learning communities. Drawing on interview data from youth and adults participating in student voice initiatives in the San Francisco Bay Area, this study examines contexts that enable “youth‐adult partnerships” in schools, including (1) fostering trust and respect among group members, (2) creating meaningful (not equal) roles, (3) building the capacity for youth and adults to successfully fulfill their roles, and (4) establishing a group size that is not too small and not too large. The article concludes by examining how youth‐adult partnerships can help improve understanding of school‐based collaborations.

Strengthening Student Voice Initiatives in High Schools: An Examination of the Supports Needed for School-Based Youth-Adult Partnerships.

School environments offer a particularly difficult setting for fostering youth-adult partnerships because of the sharp power and status distinctions among students, teachers, and administrators. Drawing on interview and observational data examining 13 student-voice initiatives in northern California, this research examines the type of supports that can enable the development of strong school-based youth-adult partnerships. The data demonstrate that efforts to reshape student roles face great resistance and require intentional effort on the part of adults and youth to sustain partnerships. Specifically, the institutional constraints of schools required extra attention to fostering more equitable relationships between youth and adults within school walls, establishing the legitimacy of these new relationships through the completion of specific and yet meaningful objectives established by the partnership, and finding sufficient time to engage in the work of building these partnerships.

Youth as a Bridge Between Home and School Comparing Student Voice and Parent Involvement as Strategies for Change

This article analyzes efforts to increase parent involvement and student voice among Mexican American families who are low income at a large comprehensive high school. Although the parent-involvement effort ultimately failed, the students developed their own initiatives to help support Latino youth and their families, including the development of a bilingual tutoring program and a translation program for families needing to communicate with the school. The experiences in this article suggest that, rather than focusing solely on parent-involvement strategies, schools also increase student voice as a way to bridge the gap between families and the school and to improve student outcomes.

One Size Does Not Fit All Differentiating Leadership to Support Teachers in School Reform

Purpose: Many of the predominant leadership models acknowledge the need to support teachers’ work, but these models rarely specify how to support teachers’ implementation process. This article studies the relationship between leadership support and teachers’ sensemaking processes. It brings together three divergent bodies of literature on educational leadership, teachers’ sensemaking and implementation of reforms to conceptualize leadership that specifically addresses how leaders can provide teachers differentiated support. Research Design: This article uses case descriptions to illuminate the relationship between leadership support and three teachers’ sensemaking processes of implementing a new initiative. The empirical data consists of observations and interviews with teachers and principal in an U.S. elementary school. Findings: The findings present the need for developing a concept of leadership that increases support of teachers’ implementation work by focusing on school leaders’ understanding of individual teachers’ views and philosophy, their enabling of flexibility of a reform, their encouraging of horizontal support structures, including teacher social networks. It also considers how leaders’ influence the school’s setting and the delivery of information around new reforms. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that providing teachers with differentiated support improves teachers’ understanding of the reform and supplies teachers the necessary tools to implement the new idea, facilitate teacher voice and participation in the process.

Using Elections as Teachable Moments: A Randomized Evaluation of the Student Voices Civic Education Program

The recommitment of public education to its civic roots has revived discussion on how to engage younger generations of citizens in electoral politics and civic life. This randomized trial of 1,670 high school students in 80 social studies classrooms evaluates the impact of an election‐based civics program on students’ civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions over the course of a semester. Analyses of these data reveal significant effects of the program on students’ self‐reported ability to cast an informed vote, knowledge of the voter registration process, belief that their vote matters, communication with others at school about politics, sense of civic obligation, and media use and analysis.

The role of leaders in enabling student voice

This article explores how leadership can help to enable student voice to occur in schools. We find that the relationship between teachers and the school leader is a critical context for enabling voice. Specifically, we find that the following concepts were important for efforts to enable and foster student voice: (1) clear vision of school that is incorporated deeply into practice as ‘the way we do things here’; (2) allowing opt-in strategies for teachers when possible; (3) recognizing that implementation across classrooms and personnel will vary depending on individual contexts, beliefs, and experiences.

The Role of Administrators in Enabling Youth-Adult Partnerships in Schools.

School leaders play a crucial role in enabling and sustaining student voice initiatives. This article identifies three specific ways in which administrators can spark and encourage a focus on increasing student voice in school decision making and in classroom practice, including (a) fostering youth–adult partnerships within the context of a schoolwide learning community, (b) buffering from administrative bureaucracy within schools, and (c) building bridges beyond school walls with intermediary organizations.