Promoting student voice by involving vocational education students and staff in citizenship education development: a participatory action research study

INTRODUCTION: Despite decades of school improvement efforts, maintaining lasting change in schools remains challenging. So far, traditional interventions have been unsuccessful in recognising schools' unique and complex contexts, which is why a shift towards a more reciprocal, emergent, and contextualised approach is necessary.

OBJECTIVE: Our aim is to develop citizenship education with students and staff in vocational education and training (VET), which increases student voice and fits the complex school system.

METHODS: We involved students and staff in citizenship education development and identified relevant factors that influenced this process. This participatory action research (PAR) study used a retrospective design assessing logbook entries, observations, interviews, and focus group discussions collected between September 2020 and September 2023 in four study programmes from one VET institution in the Netherlands. Thematic analysis was used to code the datasources.

RESULTS: Collaboration between students and staff flourished while using the curriculum negotiation tool. Relevant factors influencing the process were: alignment between project and participants' priorities and goals, receptivity to student and teacher voices, leadership engagement, and tensions and intentions about roles and responsibilities between participants.

CONCLUSIONS: This study emphasises the promise of involving students and staff in educational development. When teachers startedworking collaboratively with students, many of their initial doubts decreased, which led to renewed motivation for becoming student voice advocates. PAR has the potential of starkly disrupting the existing status quo and breaking through ingrained patterns within complex systems to ensure influence for students from all levels of education.