Student Voice in Curriculum Change: A Theoretical Reasoning

Abstract

Views about the place of young people in schools and society have changed over the past few years. A major theme in the theoretical framework of constructivist learning is that learning is an active process in which learners connect new knowledge and skills to existing ones and, thus, construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current and past knowledge. In this review, we argue that students' involvement provides opportunities for them to become active participants in their education, including making decisions about what and how they learn and how their learning is assessed. Student voice is located within a complex web of school structures and cultures that are shaped by policymakers, school leaders, teachers, researchers and students themselves. Listening and learning from student voices necessitate a shift from the ways in which teachers are engaged with students and how they perceive their own practices. Using Constructivism reasoning, we theorize that through learning, students acquire specific knowledge, which empowers them to have capacity to participate in curriculum decisions. In relation to this framework, we argue that by the time the learner has acquired knowledge and skills from learning, he should be able to share that accumulation of knowledge and skills to the curriculum development process. Further, we look at curriculum change and suggest that it refers to educational change that conveys the image of starting anew, of changing not only content but also form, of shifting from thinking with the old order to inventing a new order that is found on new assumptions, values and vision. Students' input is important in its own right, but allowing them to participate in curriculum change empowers them and encourages them to take responsibility for matters that concern them. We conceptualize that the presence of student's voice should be felt in all manner of school development.Keywords: Student, voice, curriculum change, theoretical underpinning, participatory design, constructivism. International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and DevelopmentJune , Vol. 3, No. 3 (Special Issue) ISSN: 2226 24 www.hrmars.com/journals IntroductionIn its modern interpretation, student voice is focused predominantly on the design, facilitation and improvement of learning (Mitra 2004). Views about the place of young people in schools and society have changed over the past generation. Traditionally, the views and opinions of children were often discounted as having less legitimacy than the views of adults but as attitudes towards children and young people changed, different views have arisen associated with these changes. Over the past two decades schools and education systems have used a range of terms that capture the changing views and developments. For example, in the 1980s, the terminology of the day reflected current values and beliefs about the place of students within schools. Terms such as 'student empowerment', 'student rights' and 'student participation' acknowledged the right...

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