Meaningful Student Involvement Def: Engaging students as partners in educational planning, research, teaching, evaluating, decision-making, advocacy, and more.

POSSIBILITIES for Students as School Researchers

• Examining curricular effectiveness

• Identifying important issues among their peers

• Analyzing student-adult relationships

• Co-designing school improvement research

EXAMPLES of Students as Researchers These are summaries of real stories from schools across the US where students have been engaged as researchers, exploring the schools they participate in everyday.

Financial Futures Students in Poughkeepsie, New York conducted research on their district’s budget crisis as part of a government class.  After designing a 57-question survey that solicited opinions from fellow students on what should be included in next year’s school district budget, the students hand-tabulated and analyzed data from 596 completed surveys - over half the student body.  When district board members came to their regular budget meeting, a surprise was waiting: student-created data from that survey highlighted exactly what students thought should be included in next year’s school district budget.  Board members gave their approval: “Student input should be solicited and gathered periodically so that students can always be a part of the process.  Students want to be involved!”  When the Poughkeepsie Board of Education passed its budget for the next school year, they introduced an new line item: $25,000 for “student initiatives.”

Who Runs Schools? Students with the Youth Strategy Project in Oakland, California, have written a research report that explores the dilemma of school leadership and its relationships to academic achievement and social justice, as exemplified by the Oakland schools.  The report identifies the national education trend of incapacitating public schools and the systemic disenfranchisement of poor people and communities of color.

Education and Advocacy Project Several school districts in Connecticut are participating in a student action research program coordinated by the Youth Action Research Institute.  This program is a model program that engages students in identifying and researching issues that affect the quality of education in their schools and elsewhere in the state.  The program, for fifth and six graders, has nine teachers participating who are integrating student driven action research into their classrooms using cooperative learning methods into core curricular activities. The project’s methods and goals include assessing the effects of PAR on students, educators, and the overall school communities involved.

Students as Research Allies What Kids Can Do, a nonprofit youth advocacy organization in Providence, Rhode Island, began a program in 2003 looking to engage students as allies in schools across the United States. "Students as Allies" has consequently involved hundreds of students in dozens of schools in California, Indiana, New York, and other states. More than one of their projects focuses on students engaged as researchers, and this particular report is valuable for its other examples, as well.

Students Searching for Success A high school principal in Bear Valley, California wanted to explore students’ views of learning, so she started a student-research program.  The group focused on the questions, “Do our school restructuring activities really make fundamental changes in the learning process?  Does all of our work have an impact in the classroom?”  As part of the yearlong study, the student researchers participated in a twice-weekly course that focused on their work, and consequently, the students became the driving force in the data collection and analyses.  Students conceived the methods used and led the data collection work.  In their study, the student researchers collected data from 200 of the school’s 1,600 students. They also explored learning outside of school, how students learn best, and the school’s impacts on students learning. - Story is taken from Kushman, J., Shanessey, J. (ed). (1997). Look Who's Talking Now: Student Views of Restructuring Schools. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Education Laboratory.

Separate But Unequal For many kids, summer camp means pitching tents and listening to spooky stories around a campfire. But for 100 city students who signed on as co-researchers on a university project, summer camp was serious business. The kids -- white, African American, Latino, Asian, and Afro-Caribbean, with a range of achievement levels -- examined race, ethnicity, and class in their New York area high schools. At the first camp session, City University of New York researchers Michelle Fine and Maria Elena Torre unveiled their plan for an achievement gap study. But the students proposed a broader “opportunity gap” study that included student achievement as one of several “separate but unequal” issues. They suggested topics the adult researchers hadn’t thought of, such as immigrant students’ school experiences and school counselors’ interactions with students of different races. During the following school year, reports Susan Black, the kids administered nearly 10,000 surveys and analyzed them by race, ethnicity, curriculum track, school location, and school size. Then they compared the survey results with additional information collected from focus groups, observations, and interviews. The student researchers didn’t set out to change the world, but they hoped their research would “inspire action and some new and creative ideas for improving schools.”

 

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PROGRAMS for Students as Researchers This section features organizations and programs focused on engaging students as educational researchers in schools across the US.

Students as Allies in Improving Their Schools What Kids Can Do worked with youth organizations in five cities across the US to engage students as they ask powerful questions about schools. Their site includes stories, resources, essays, and summaries of student researchers' findings about student voice, relationships, school effectiveness, and more.

Youth Action Research Institute YARI (formerly the National Teen Action Research Center) is a program of the Institute for Community Research, located in Hartford, Connecticut. YARI promotes the use of action research for personal, group, and community development.

Youth Action Research Group YARG, a program at Georgetown University, involves community residents in defining, researching and critically analyzing the challenges facing their neighborhoods. The young people in YARG learn participatory action research methods and ethnographic techniques to better understand their surrounding community for the purpose of addressing pressing social issues. 

Youth Strategy Project Data Center's youth program, located in Oakland, California, provides strategic research, consultation, and training for social, economic and environmental justice organizations. It is tailored to build the research and analytical skills of the next generation of movement leaders. 

CIRCLE Youth-Led Research CIRCLE, a youth civic engagement research program at the University of Maryland, annually supports a number of student-led research projects across the nation that focus on education. Past projects have examined school culture, teaching efficacy, racism, and more.

Students as Researchers A program of the Australia Department of Education.

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TOOLS for Students as Researchers These are actual curricula, discussion frameworks, research tools, and other activity-oriented publications focused on engaging students as researchers.

Student-Led Research on Schools Example Page A collection of student-written research studies focusing on school.

Criteria to Assess Youth Involvement in Decision-Making This is a powerfully comprehensive measurement of youth involvement in schools by the Canadian Association on School Health. It includes the relationship of youth involvement to the sponsoring organization; the nature of youth involvement; the processes of youth involvement; applications of youth involvement, and; evidence of youth involvement.

Student Voice Indicator Tool [MS Word doc] The Government of South Australia designed this tool to measure several aspects of student voice throughout schools.

Ladder of Student Involvement Adam Fletcher adapted this tool from the work of Roger Hart in order to identify potential location of students throughout school decision-making.

Framework for Assessing Student Voice Prof. Michael Fielding first established this framework in 2001 for Forum. Since then, dozens of projects have used it to evaluate their efforts.

Student-Designed & Delivered Classroom Observation Tool Students at Lexington High School in Massachusetts use this tool to evaluate their teachers' classroom performance.

Guide to Consulting Students about Schools [PDF] From a UK-based project that studies "pupil voice" in schools for students under-18 years old.

ARTICLES about Students as Researchers These are articles from newsletters, magazines, websites, and organizations focused on engaging students as researchers in schools.

Students as Researchers Susan Black explores a groundbreaking project in New York City where dozens of students examine the experiences, opinions, and ideas of students about dozens of issues in their educational experiences today.

SooHoo, S. (1993). Students as partners in research and restructuring schools. The Educational Forum 57. Summer: 386-393.

BOOKS/CHAPTERS about Students as Researchers This section features books or chapters in books that specifically address engaging students as researchers in schools.

Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-Imagining Schools. Wies, L. & Fine, M. (2003). This book is a collection of papers that examines many social justice issues in public education. The first section is a collection of papers mostly from the 1980s that explores the active "silencing" that plagues students of color and low-income students in American schools. The second section is co-written with students, exploring their perspectives and the research these student researchers have conducted to provide powerful lessons for pre-service and experienced teachers.

Students Teaching, Teachers Learning. Branscombe, A., Goswami, D., Schwartz, J. (1992). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. This book focuses on shared inquiry. The research projects detailed in these chapters show how classroom dynamics change and more active learning takes place for both teacher and student when collaboration is involved. The projects here range from elementary through graduate school in both rural and urban, public and private settings.

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