The working definition we have adopted for this project is: Student voice entails the engagement of students in shaping their studies and study contexts through expressing their views, needs and concerns. It puts students into working relationships (including, but not limited to, partnership) with policy makers, providers, practitioners and other agencies, and challenges organisations to respond appropriately to the issues student voices raise. (adapted from NIACE, quoted in LSIS 2012:6) What do you think of this definition? Does it cover those activities or outputs you would consider to be "Student Voice"?
0 Comments
What is "good practice" in responding to student voice? Does this mean the same thing to students as it does to others - student affairs staff, teaching staff, university managers? What does your university do to respond to student voice? Please let us know here.
Student surveys, like the NSS, are a popular way to gauge "student voice". But the student (above) disagrees. What ways of giving students "a voice", or listening to students' voices, work well in your university? How, and why, are they effective?
Just like "Student Engagement", "Student Voice" seems to be one of those constructs that everyone uses, confident that everyone else knows what they mean... only to discover down the track that others understood (or meant) something entirely else when they used the term.
So far, in the literature I've discovered the following meanings in different authors' uses of the phrase:
When you use the term, which meaning (one of those listed, or something else entirely) do you have in mind? |
|