From the Director of Pymble Institute

From the Director of Pymble Institute

I was honoured recently to contribute to the Association of Independent Schools (NSW) annual research symposium through delivering an online workshop and participating in the panel discussion. The focus of the event, Leading Evidence Informed Practice, allowed me to share how the Pymble Institute is enabling research-rich thinking and practice with a particular focus on student-guided, lead and co-developed research through my presentation on embedding student voice in research. Like many other schools and research projects intentionally encouraging and using children and young people as designers and evaluators, the Pymble Institute is committed to exploring more authentic and impactful ways to place students at the centre of research which affects them.

Interested readers can source a large body of literature on student voice as it is a topic of much discussion amongst education academics. The themes of power and participation, along with respect and rights, are core to engagement between children and adults, students and teachers, and schools and universities. At Pymble, we are exploring ways of furthering student voice in research in activities including:

  • The College Ethics Committee – involving students, staff and external members who review, evaluate and approve internal and external research projects.
  • The student research conference – run for the first time this year, planning for the 2023 conference is now underway. Save the date for 17 May 2023.
  • The student research journal, Perspective, currently in production with a team of student editors and designers working with over 30 submissions.
  • The Year 12 Anti-Racism and Allyship initiative which researched and developed curriculum through a partnership with Professor Fiona White, Professor of Social Psychology, University of Sydney. The team also conducted research and analysed survey data to understand the impact of the curriculum on their peers.

In my conference workshop, I invited participants to reflect on the activities they are using, or could use, to include students in research at their school and to consider how these activities contribute to school culture. We also discussed the opportunities and risks of engaging students in research, and how these elements aligned with more transgressive and transformative forms of student voice in research.

An educational researcher I find inspiring in this regard is Professor Peter Renshaw from the University of Queensland who is co-researching and co-writing with teachers, Environmental Education Centre leaders, community environmentalists and school students in research supporting nature-based education and student involvement in this important area. I highly recommend Peter’s work and that co-written with Ron Tooth and co-presented with teacher Harriet Mortlock and students, Lucie and Reshma, including the paper, Feeling for the Anthropocene: Placestories of living justice, The Australian Education Researcher (2021, 48, 1-21).

Next time you find yourself or a colleague saying you’ll need to ‘capture, obtain or listen to student voice’, consider the following:

  • What’s the purpose of seeking student voice?
  • What will you do with what you hear?
  • How prepared are you to really listen?
  • How will the process assist students to take action themselves?

My thanks go to colleagues from the AISNSW Evidence Institute for an excellent conference and to participants from schools within and beyond the independent schools network for their collegiality and input.

Best wishes for Term 4 and the end of the year,

Dr Sarah Loch