From Student Voice to Agency with Stephanie Thompson - PTE023

Pushing The Edge with Greg Curran

Student voice is often spoken of within education circles. Often though it's voice with limitations or prescriptions, with adults ultimately making the decisions or limiting the amount of influence that students actually have.

In this episode, we take a different route. We examine how one school in New Zealand moved from student voice to student agency.

Here Maori students (for example) play an active and influential role in the life of the school.

They lead training workshops with parents and carers, as well as general community consultations. They also participate as Student Ambassadors on interview panels for new teaching staff.

We've also got the Lightning Round. Here Steph and I are challenged to Push The Edge on education issues in a quick and speedy manner.

For complete Show-Notes go to: PushingTheEdge.org/23

Episode Run-Down

? How Stephanie pushes the edge in education (2:07)

? Tapping into our students' experiences of school (3:14)

? Is what we're doing making a difference? (4:15)

? How do we get community involved? (5:08)

? Bringing in the Maori community through student voice and action (6:16)

? How the Maori students coached the parents: helping us with our homework (7:13)

? How to encourage authentic student voice and student agency (8:51)

? How to show parents we're fair dinkum about innovation (11:24)

? Stepping back as teachers (12:51)

? Collecting student voice about writing (13:48)

? Actually listening to students' views: writing about motorbikes (16:01)

? Using student interests like soccer and football to drive our teaching (16:44)

? A powerful question: Who's responsible for your learning? (18:44)

? Students contributing to, and participating in, teacher interview panels (19:36)

? Working with challenging behaviours and not giving up on students (21:45)

? The Lightning Round - Engagement, hard questions, community, stepping back, coaching, voice, and potential (27:02)

Read Steph's Reflection on this Episode

? Read Steph's blog-post on preparing for this episode, participating, and then listening afterward. It's a top read - http://goo.gl/qUrCmN

Episode Links

? Stephanie Thompson on Twitter - https://twitter.com/st3ph007

? Stephanie Thompson's Blog - http://fourseasonsinonekiwi.blogspot.co.nz/

? Beach Haven Primary School Website - http://www.beachhaven.school.nz/

? The Loss of Potential by Stephanie Thompson - http://goo.gl/b0JYf6

? Brendan Spillane Bio - http://goo.gl/sXjLta

? Victorian Association for Restorative Justice in Schools - http://www.varj.asn.au/schools