"Don't Underestimate Youth. We Have Something to Teach Adults": The Politics of Student Voice in School Improvement

• In Event: 49.039 - Moving Beyond Tradition: Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis

Abstract

Student voice can be a strong lever of change in school improvement efforts. Administrators and teachers often sidestep equity issues in order to avoid getting “too political” and maintain the status quo. However, research has shown how students model for adults how to engage in advocacy leadership that encourages school communities to take an honest look at equity issues such as institutionalized racism and heterosexism (Mitra, 2006). Although youth participatory action research (YPAR) is one of the most democratic forms of participatory school reform (Oakes & Rogers, 2006), even this type of advocacy leadership is not divorced from the politics of school improvement (see Irizarry, 2011). In order to take a critical examination of the political reality of advocacy leadership and the role of student voice in school improvement, we present a subset of findings from a two-year ethnographic case study of a high school class that focused on issues of social justice. We found that even though students encouraged faculty to initiate significant changes in school policies and structures, these efforts were not met without politics internal and external to the classroom.

Authors

• Anjale DeVawn Welton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Tiffany Octavia Harris, University of Illinois

• Karla Altamirano, Urbana High School

• Tierra Williams, Urbana High School