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Recent educational programs emphasize the concept of pupil participation which entail pupil autonomy during all steps of learning. However, little is known about how this is implemented in practice. The objective of the current study is to investigate how pupil participation is practiced in the Norwegian school subject Food and Health at lower secondary school level. The pupils' own perception of pupil participation is the focus of the paper. The objective was addressed by a mixed method approach including survey data, observations, and interviews with pupils. Pupil participation was studied in eight areas of the subject, namely 1) shaping the academic content, 2) selecting ingredients and dishes, 3) purchasing and calculating costs of ingredients, 4) preparation for cooking, 5) cooking, 6) distribution of tasks, 7) meal situation, and 8) assessment. The results indicate that pupil participation varies for different parts of the subject, being lowest for shaping the academic content and purchasing and calculating costs, and highest for the meal situation. Overall, the findings indicate that pupil participation is not practiced to the extent that the educational program requires, and future studies needs to shed light on how degree of pupil participation can be increased to achieve the goals in the educational program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professionals who elicit the voice of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have a commitment to ensure a person‐centred approach to assessment, as per the Children and Families Act (2014). However, there are recognised barriers to eliciting voice that inhibit meaningful pupil participation within assessments for an Education, Health and Care Plan and in Annual Reviews. A three‐round Delphi method was carried out with eight professionals from one local authority and a local specialist school, in order to develop consensus on the characteristics of meaningful participation and provide solutions to the perceived barriers when eliciting voice. Findings show that the most significant barriers to eliciting pupil's voice include the child or young person's language and cognitive ability, along with their anxieties and fears of meeting professionals. Professionals felt the limits to participation can be overcome by prioritising a child or young person's views within an assessment and using creative methods to elicit their voice. A document of good practice was produced from the findings based on the professionals' feedback. The resulting document could inform training and professional development for SEND professionals when eliciting pupil's voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that participation as involvement as well as taking part in decision making is a fundamental part of learning. The first large arena for experiencing this for many young people is the school. This paper investigates how 16 pupils at grade eight view their own and their teacher's role when it comes to facilitating participation. The pupils are interviewed the semester after a long researcher led participation project and the interviews are analyzed using thematic analysis. The analysis identifies four different types of participation from the pupils' responses. These four types can be connected to passive and active participation as well as participation as involvement and participation as influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To sustainably implement a healthy school community in which stakeholders, including pupils, feel ownership over health-promotion activities, building community capacity is important. Pupils have experiential knowledge that is complementary to professional knowledge, but their perspectives on capacity-building processes are underexposed. This study aims to explore secondary-school pupils' perceptions about key influencers on physical activity and dietary choices and starting points for building community capacity.Methods: Seven focus groups with forty one pupils were held in four secondary schools engaged in a capacity-building intervention. Transcripts were analysed thematically regarding key influencers about choices in the home and school setting and capacity-building strategies (leadership, participation, tailored health-promotion activities and local networks).Results: Parents remained important influencers for making healthy choices, but snacking choices were increasingly made independently from parents based on attractiveness, availability and cost. Choices to engage in physical activity depended on social aspects and opportunities in the physical environment. Pupils considered their influence over the healthy school community limited, desired more involvement, but require this to be facilitated. They identified leaders mainly within formal structures, for example, student councils. They believed health-promotion activities related to the physical environment and project-based activities within the curriculum have the maximum potential to stimulate healthy behaviours in school communities.Conclusion: This study shows that pupils can reflect critically on their physical activity and dietary choices, and on how this can contribute to processes in creating a healthy school community. In order to take an active role, they need to be considered as full partners and leadership roles should be facilitated in existing structures.

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More than 60 nations worldwide have endorsed the Comprehensive School Safety Framework (CSSF) to promote education quality and ensure a safe learning environment. The CSSF aims to take a participatory approach to inform risk and protect educators and learners from harm, violation, injury, and death in schools and other learning spaces. This article adopts the CSSF to analyze pupil participation in interventions at Cambodia's primary schools. The study focuses on exposures, awareness and knowledge, interventions, and the engagement of girls and boys in safe schools. We conducted surveys with 768 pupils at 34 primary schools in Cambodia's Stung Treng province for quantitative data and case studies with key stakeholders for qualitative data. The study reveals that (1) primary school pupils remain exposed to natural and man-made hazards. Insufficient infrastructure and limited interventions are the cause of exposure leading to vulnerability for pupils. (2) School infrastructure and awareness-raising to increase pupils' knowledge and attitudes significantly promote safe school interventions. While school safety and educational continuity management help increase pupils' knowledge and positive attitude, schools do not have the financial resources to carry out interventions. (3) Girls play more of a role as leaders and deliverers, but boys actively carry out activities for interventions. Girls need more instruction to participate in school tasks and have unequal access to resources. This first empirical study explores the implications of gendered participation in CSSF implementation and addresses a literature gap related to safe school intervention in developing countries like Cambodia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficacy of parents’ meetings in primary schools in the UK is an area in need of research. This article uses an approach informed by grounded theory to explore the experiences and satisfaction of parents, teachers and pupils regarding bi-annual meetings to discuss pupil progress. A two-phase approach was utilised, with diary-interviews with parents and teachers and group pupil interviews in Phase 1, followed by a parents’ questionnaire in Phase 2 derived from Phase 1 data. The findings from a doctoral study provide an overall more positive depiction of these meetings compared to existing research in the secondary sector. A model of the teacher as the expert and information-giver persists, but a consumerist ideology appears evident as parents seek to participate and advocate on behalf of their child. As parents become more proactive and teachers act to retain their professional authority, the interaction of the professional and advocate has excluded the perspective of the child. This leaves pupils in search of self-advocacy at meetings in which they are the object of discussion, but cannot be present. While pupils generally favour involvement, adults express a protectionist perspective on pupil exclusion with exceptional factors indicated as being the age of the child and the content of the meeting.

Teachers are increasingly called on to use dialogic teaching practices to engage active pupil participation in academically challenging classroom discourse. Such practices are in tension with commonly held beliefs about pupil ability as fixed and/or context independent. Moreover, teaching practices that seek to make pupil thinking visible can also make perceived pupil “inarticulateness” and/or “low ability” visible, with important implications for pupil identities. This article explores how teachers in a dialogic teaching intervention managed the participation and identities of “low ability” pupils. We use linguistic ethnographic methods to analyze three different case studies in which teachers seek to include underachieving pupils’ voices in the discussion and discuss implications for dialogic pedagogy and the study of classroom social identification processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has recently said, ‘Improving school attainment is arguably the single most important objective in this programme for Government’ (Parliamentary address, 1 September 2015). Scotland’s levels of academic attainment have become an increasing focus for debate amid continuing concerns that children living in the most deprived areas in Scotland are ‘6 to 13 months behind their peers in problem-solving at age 5; 11 to 18 months behind their peers in expressive vocabulary at age 5; and around two years of schooling behind their peers at age 15’. The link between educational disadvantage and low levels of attainment is well documented in many countries, but particularly troubling in the United Kingdom, where overall levels of inequality are greater than in many other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, including Sweden. This article draws on recent research in three fields of interest, namely student participation, home–school relationships and relationships within school, to explore the challenges for education in improving overall attainment. It considers how these fields of interest connect with each other and with issues of inequality and, finally, argues that they each have the potential to offer a new set of ‘guidewires’ for tackling this challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficacy of parents’ meetings in primary schools in the UK is an area in need of research. This article uses an approach informed by grounded theory to explore the experiences and satisfaction of parents, teachers and pupils regarding bi-annual meetings to discuss pupil progress. A two-phase approach was utilised, with diary-interviews with parents and teachers and group pupil interviews in Phase 1, followed by a parents’ questionnaire in Phase 2 derived from Phase 1 data. The findings from a doctoral study provide an overall more positive depiction of these meetings compared to existing research in the secondary sector. A model of the teacher as the expert and information-giver persists, but a consumerist ideology appears evident as parents seek to participate and advocate on behalf of their child. As parents become more proactive and teachers act to retain their professional authority, the interaction of the professional and advocate has excluded the perspective of the child. This leaves pupils in search of self-advocacy at meetings in which they are the object of discussion, but cannot be present. While pupils generally favour involvement, adults express a protectionist perspective on pupil exclusion with exceptional factors indicated as being the age of the child and the content of the meeting.

This article sets out to explore how young people understand and experience the notions of democracy and participation in their secondary schools. We draw on their own words to examine their perspective on participation in everyday life at school to understand what kind of democratic education they are participating in. The article forms part of the Demoskole1 project, which studies democracy and the participation of school community members in secondary schools in Catalunya (Spain). To date, our fieldwork suggests that while, in most cases, the opportunity for pupils to participate in decision-making processes is limited, there are differences between schools. Two factors, in particular, appear to have a significant impact in terms of improving pupil participation. The existence of relationships based on trust and more horizontal forms of collaboration between teachers and pupils leads to a sense of wellbeing. This, in turn, has an effect on the atmosphere within the school. The article focuses on the characteristics that distinguish the three schools that took part in the study with the aim of analysing those elements that lead to the creation of a more or less democratic atmosphere in the relations between the various members of the school community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal for Educational Research Online / Journal für Bildungsforschung Online is the property of Waxmann Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The person-centred review (PCR) is a model for the review of a student’s special educational needs (SEN) which places the young person and their family at the centre of the process. This mixed-methods, exploratory study investigated the views of 16 students with SEN aged between 10–11 years (Year 6) and 13–14 years (Year 9), and their parents/carers on their PCRs (which were mostly held at transition). Attention was paid to potential changes in the young people’s locus of control and feelings towards school. Findings indicated that the PCR is a collaborative, constructive and reassuring process for families where a wealth of information is shared openly and honestly within a relaxed, yet structured, meeting. The young people were generally positive about the process, although many felt daunted beforehand. Some parents felt the meeting was too long and not entirely accessible to children. The study did not conclude that the young people’s locus of control or feelings towards their education changed following the PCR. Implications for good practice are discussed, particularly for educational psychologists and in the context of the SEN and Disability Code of Practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Slovak Journal for Educational Sciences / Pedagogika is the property of Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovak Educational Research Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the process of Learning to Learnb from the pupils’ perspective. The Learning to Learn in Schools Project started in 2003 and includes teachers and pupils from primary and secondary age phases in four local authorities. Key to the project has been a focus on the collaborative exploration of metacognition in practice. With the increased prominence of pupil participation and learner voice in the rhetoric of education during this time, the inclusion of learner perspectives in the project was perhaps inevitable. However, there appears to be something beneficial about the definition of Learning to Learn (L2L) used by the project that supports the development of such participation. As the project progressed, and the incidence of pupil participation increased, evidence from the contexts needed to support learning-based dialogues also developed as well as, crucially, understanding of how the interplay between L2L and pupil participation operates. This article therefore explores the link between the rhetoric of the pupil participation agenda and an understanding of L2L from the pupils’ perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of CEPS Journal is the property of University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Language, the Learner and the School, Douglas Barnes recognised that intonation was important to classroom interaction but also acknowledged that his own research team did not choose to analyse it. This article presents instances of classroom talk about poetry and reflects on them using Barnes' concepts of pupil participation, exploratory talk and differentiated attentiveness. Transcripts rendered via Conversation Analysis afford attention to patterns of sound, suggesting the very particular nature of listening to poems and of pupils' responses to them. It seems Barnes' terms cannot account entirely for what occurs. Through original analysis, the author elaborates on Barnes' terms, concurrently reflecting on a domain of learning in English little considered in extant research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this qualitative case study is to investigate how learning in “democratic participation” is constituted by the social interaction and conversation pattern in school democratic meetings in a Swedish primary school. According to the findings, a pupil control discourse and the Initiation-Response-Evaluation pattern dominates the conversations. The teacher initiates by asking a question, the pupils respond by answering the question, and then the teacher evaluates that response. The findings show no discursive shift from traditional classroom talk to democratic deliberative talk. Instead there is an emphasis on the “right answers” and subordinating authorities rather than deliberative dialogue and democratic participation, which influences pupils to adopt a naïve or a cynical attitude to democracy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent moves towards greater pupil participation in school decision-making have in part been based on instrumental rationales, such as increases in test scores and improvements in behaviour. This article assesses a different approach — that of the ‘prefigurative’ — through which the school embodies the democratic society it aims to create.Two examples of prefigurative initiatives in Brazil are assessed: the Landless Movement, a social movement for agrarian reform that runs a large network of schools in its rural communities, and the Plural School, a framework of social inclusion in the municipal education system of Belo Horizonte. Qualitative case studies of the two showed significant enhancement of the democratic culture of the schools and changes in the teacher—student relationship. However, a number of problematic issues were also raised, including the difficulties in extending participation to the whole student body, and the tensions with teachers when students began to exert greater influence in school. Finally, the implications of these prefigurative cases for an understanding of education for democratic citizenship are drawn out. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this study is to examine the strategies which teachers use in their everyday interactions with pupils to work with and uphold school and classroom rules and to what extent their rule-work strategies give pupils opportunities to have a say and participate in rule-making. The study is based on fieldwork in two Swedish primary schools. According to the findings, the teachers use four main rule-work strategies: (a) assertion, (b) explanation, (c) negotiation, and (d) preparation. The findings show that it is usually the adults in school who make decisions about school rules and that pupils are seldom given any opportunities to create, modify or abolish formal rules through open negotiations. Furthermore, when school democracy meetings take place, they tend to be illusory, reducing negotiation to a matter of figuring out the "right" answer and confirming to proposals from authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, an array of policy interventions relating to children, young people and education in the UK have positioned pupil participation in the (re)design of school environments as a key imperative. Indeed, pupil participation is an explicit, core ideal of major, ongoing school (re)construction and (re)design programmes in the UK such as Building Schools for the Future, Academy schools, and Primary Capital Funding. The aim of this paper is to juxtapose the ideals of participation as expressed in national policy statements, via-a-vis the ways in which participation in these contexts is being done (or not) in practice. To this end, the paper presents findings from in-depth interviews with Local Authority officers responsible for the implementation of policies relating to school (re)building and (re)design in diverse localities. These interviews show how the idea(l) of pupil participation may, in practice, be foreclosed by contingencies, budgets, issues, debates, personalities and events at grassroots level. The paper will suggest that national policy-making regarding participation should be better grounded in the complex and diverse realities of the (re)design of school environments in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children in their final year of primary school (Year 6) were asked about their experiences of transition to high school so far. This multi-method study included questionnaires, discussion, drawing and writing. The children raised a range of issues including mixed feelings; friends; bullying; getting lost; race; being the only child from their primary school; teachers; growing up; and school choice. Learning issues were rarely raised, suggesting that the social aspects of the move are most important for children at the end of Year 6. Most students wanted as much experience of their new school as possible, before they start attending there as a pupil. A key finding from this study is that children can be a very valuable resource in improving transition. Given accessible opportunities, which need not take up large amounts of time or resources, all children can inform the transition process and contribute to ongoing improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the possible contributions that children can make in educational settings that aim to move towards greater inclusion. In constructing her debate, Kyriaki Messiou, lecturer in education in the Centre for Educational Studies at the University of Hull, draws on understandings gained through an ethnographic study carried out in a primary school in Cyprus. She used qualitative methods to collect her data, carrying out participant observations and semi-structured interviews with all the children in the school. Her study adopted a broad view of inclusion that is concerned with addressing any form of marginalisation that might be experienced by students. In the first phases of the study, children who were possibly experiencing marginalisation were identified and the practices used in the school were explored. Then, during the final phase, which is the main focus of this article, efforts were made to help children think in more inclusive ways. Kyriaki Messiou describes the activities she used in this intervention phase, all designed to promote pupil participation, and argues that these offer promising strategies for teachers who wish to develop more inclusive ways of working. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tahiya Mahbub is a lecturer in English studies at North South University located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In this article, she presents some of the data on which her MPhil thesis, completed at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, was based. This research was carried out in Bangladesh, focusing on a primary school run by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) BRAC. Tahiya Mahbub adopted a case study approach in order to investigate this single-teacher, single-room school in Tongi, a suburb of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The work she reports here explores children's understandings about the culture, policy and practice at their school. Tahiya Mahbub argues that this sort of inquiry is necessary to the development of inclusion. She advocates equality and togetherness not only for children in school, but also between children and adults in educational research and eventually in the bigger picture of society itself. Finally, she proposes, it is essential to listen to children's experiences of school, their suggestions for change and their ideas in order to lift children's low social status in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]