Monday, October 20, 2008
Becta -commissioned report on Learner Voice in the UK published.
In January 2007 Becta commissioned Futurelab to carry out research into current learner voice activity taking place in UK education across all ages from Primary schools to Higher Education.
Since January 2007 Futurelab have reviewed current practice, interviewed teachers and learners in a variety of education settings and held workshops to explore the potential of future developments in learner voice. All these strands have been brought together in the report, Learner Engagement by Leila Walker and Ann Logan, published in September 2008.
The report focuses on how learner voice ideas and principles are currently impacting on policy and practice and on the potential for future development.
Learner Voice is now no longer an added extra but a key criteria requiring evidence both by Ofsted and in school self-assessment. Learner Voice debate is now more about how we select the best methods to enable learner perspective and ideas to reach educators and policy makers for the benefit of the education system and less about making learners feel they have been listened to, for their benefit. Recognition that placing all perspectives and ideas into the process of educational development is genuinely the best method for improvement, changes the role of learner voice provision considerably from something we, as educators and policy-makers are doing for them, (them being learners) to a partnership of and for all of us.
The Futurelab report reminds us that education is not as innovative as some might like to think in this area with many other areas of society having service users’ views and ideas embedded in development strategies and everyday practice for some time. Far from being ahead, “there is a real risk education will become one of the few areas of social life in which core communities and consumers of a service are left unconsulted.” The first time many learners have experienced being given a real voice which impacts on their school is when they are at school-leaving age and can voice a preference: many use this opportunity to leave the institution or the education system.
Having established that genuine learner voice is a core requirement of all schools and educational settings, the report details how beneficial it is for schools when implemented successfully. Genuine partnership between learners and teachers develops engaged learners who are learning the skills of active citizenship. Learning is easier and deeper when both parties are striving for it to succeed. The report reminds the reader at this point that teaching in this collaborative way is neither new nor untested, “to teach is to learn twice” (Jospeh Joubert, 1782)
The assumption is often made the learners will need to be trained to use their say/stake appropriately if given “too much” say in their own learning and the way their school is run. Reading the findings of this report it may be the teachers who are more in need of having appropriate expectations. The report cites successful learner voice practice as that which has the genuine possibility of change attached to it. Writing on learner voice , Bragg describes the appropriate viewpoint of a teacher, “ we will have to be both disappointed and delighted by what they say.” (2001)*
Young people and increasingly children are used to giving their views and being part of communities which negotiate and abide by common rules through their competency with digital technologies. Belonging to a community and presenting their own views and adding comments to those of others around them are everyday experiences for many, many young people out of school in their use of the web2.0 technologies.
Teachers may be more in need of training in knowing how and why we need to pick up speed in incorporating these skills and entitlements in schools and education. The Futurelab report highlights the need for staff training if learner voice is going to reap the most rewards for all of us. The report identifies the key role digital technologies can play in learner engagement through learner voice by using the webtools such as forums, blogs , social interest groups more competently and confidently in the everyday of school and classroom life.
“It’s not about learners using technology, it is about how technology makes it possible for them to get their achievements, thoughts and ideas noticed, respected and acted on by the community.”
*Bragg, S (2001). Taking a joke: learning from voices we don’t want to hear. Forum, 43(2), 70-3