Student Voice Research

This powerful resource is for researchers and educational leaders who are interested in understanding and applying research methods that emphasize youth voice. The authors argue that most educational research either omits critical understandings of youth or, even worse, presents inaccuracies due to faulty techniques. Researching how youth experience their schools and communities requires specific conceptual tools that address researcher bias, power dynamics, and the contextual considerations that impact meaning-making processes. Responding to these issues, the authors present the Student Voice Research Framework—an approach that both novice and advanced researchers can use to address assumptions and overcome bias as they engage with youth. Readers are provided with clear steps for implementing the framework, as well as examples of how some of the most innovative qualitative and quantitative researchers in the world are using it. The text includes numerous interview, survey, and other protocols with strategies that researchers can use immediately or adapt for their own studies. This comprehensive volume is a must-have for anyone doing research about and with youth.

Book Features:

• Guidance for addressing persistent problems of bias in educational inquiry to better engage in study about and with students.
• Examination of student voice research as its own field with its own typologies and research questions.
• Chapters highlighting innovative qualitative and quantitative research methods and strategies with ready-to-use protocols and other tools.
• A forward-looking conversation about social justice and what democracy could look like in schools.
• A toolkit of research methods and school change processes to address difficult questions in education.

Marc Brasof is an associate professor of education, director of secondary social studies and English education, and the Rosemary and Walter Blankley Endowed Chair in Education at Arcadia University. Joseph Levitan is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.

“This book recognizes students as the consequential stakeholders who bear the burden of decisions most often made by others…Finding the means to negotiate power relationships is a core theme of this impressive collection and is embedded in the Student Voice Research Framework…Each chapter requires a careful and critical reading."
—From the Foreword by Susan Groundwater-Smith, Honorary Professor, Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney

“Marc Brasof and Joseph Levitan have done the field of student voice research a remarkable service by creating a critical resource at a time of dynamic flux and turbulence. Their insightful framework, effectively illustrated by their contributors, holds promise not only for researchers but for all of us who work for equity and democracy in education and society at large.”
—Steven Jay Gross, professor emeritus of educational leadership, College of Education and Human Development, Temple University

Contents

Foreword Susan Groundwater-Smith  vii

Introduction: Student Voice: Reframing School Change by Repositioning Educational Research  1
Marc Brasof and Joseph Levitan

PART I: The Student Voice Research Framework and Philosophical Underpinnings

1.  The Student Voice Research Framework  13
Marc Brasof and Joseph Levitan

2.  Epistemological Issues in Student Voice Research  38
Joseph Levitan and Marc Brasof

PART II: Preparing for Student Voice Work

3.  The Ethics of Student Voice Research  57
William C. Frick

4.  Considering Space and Time: Power Dynamics and Relationships Between Children and Adults  68
Kate Wall, Claire Cassidy, Carol Robinson, Mhairi C. Beaton, Lorna Arnott, and Elaine Hall

5.  Student Voice: Assessing Research in the Field  84
Lindsay Lyons, Ellen MacCannell, and Vanessa Gold

6.  Reflection and Reflexion on Student Participation and System Change  100
Pat Thomson

PART III: Student Voice Methods in Action

7.  Making Meaning and Planning Change with Students Using Photo-Cued Interviewing  117
Kayla M. Johnson

8.  Participatory Visual Data Analysis: Tools for Empowering Students Toward Social Change  138
Lisa J. Starr

9.  Listening to Relations of Power and Potential with Material Methods  153
Eve Mayes

10.  Balancing Breadth and Depth: Using Mixed Methods in Scale Development Research  168
Lindsay Lyons

11.  Intersecting Voices: An Integrative Approach to Applying the Student Voice Research Framework in Teacher Education  183
Alison Cook-Sather, Heather Curl, and Chanelle Wilson

Conclusion: The Past, Present, and Future of Student Voice Research  201
Joseph Levitan and Marc Brasof

References  207

About the Editors and Contributors  231

Index  235

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