Want to Know How Kids Feel about Their Experiences in High School? New NYKids Study Findings on Student Voice from Malverne Senior High
By Aaron Leo & Kristen C. Wilcox
As announced in recent blog posts, our NYKids team has just completed the second phase of the College and Career Readiness Study focusing on students’ perspectives on their high school experience at two odds-beating schools: Malverne Senior High School and Crown Point High School.
This blog is the first in a series we will be offering over the next several weeks highlighting findings from this new study. We center attention on one finding around student agency from our newly published case study on Malverne High School in which we spotlight students’ experiences with exercising their voices.
We foreground our findings with other recent research indicating positive effects on learning and engagement when student agency is promoted and share two take-aways on how educators can leverage student voice to engage young people and prepare them for life beyond high school.
Research on Student Agency
As has been found in other research, developing student agency by opening up opportunities for students’ to express their voices can have positive effects on learning as students are more likely to be engaged when they are given some control over their school experiences and they see how these experiences are relevant to their lives and things they care about.
Furthermore, student agency is closely related to collaboration, teamwork, and self-regulation— “21st Century” competencies, which some scholars view as being crucial to active participation in today’s complex and changing society.
Encouraging Student Voice
In our interviews and focus groups with students from Malverne Senior High School, we found they shared the view that their school leaders, teachers, and other adults encouraged them to voice their opinions and concerns about issues that matter to them in and outside of their school.
Though, as one student admitted, “not every problem can get fixed,” overall Malverne students who participated in our study felt that they were heard by adults and had some agency to address their concerns.
Malverne students associated experiences wherein they were invited to express their voices with fostering deeper relationships with their peers and school staff and preparing them to navigate difficult situations in general.
How was student voice encouraged?
#1: Treating students like adults
While talking about politics or other challenging and complicated issues such as sexual assault and mental health can be full of minefields for school leaders and educators, Malverne students expressed being grateful for being treated like “adults” – as one Malverne student put it. This student, like her peers, reported that Malverne staff make students feel comfortable and open to talking through difficult topics and doing this prepared them to engage in dialogue with their peers and other adults who may not share the same views as them.
#2: Helping students’ voices be heard
Several student participants also described examples of student-led initiatives such as a walkout planned in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. School and district leaders, wanting to ensure the walkout could be done safely, met with students to create a plan on which they could all agree. “We sat in the conference room [and] talked about what we wanted to do, how we wanted to do it,” explained one student.
The event ultimately developed into a memorial in which the entire student body walked to the field behind the school and stood in the shape of a peace sign in honor of the victims of the shooting. “That was really nice that they were able to listen to us,” one Malverne student reported.
A Powerful Trio: Student Voice, Choice, and Leadership
While treating students as adults by respecting their concerns and helping their voices be heard are two ways student agency was encouraged at Malverne Senior High, these approaches were complemented by opportunities for making choices and taking on leadership roles. This powerful trio of voice, choice, and leadership, we describe in more detail in the Malverne Student Study report.
Stay tuned for upcoming blogs on the student study findings at NYKids’ News and please reach out with feedback, suggestions, or support for your continuous improvement initiatives at nykids@albany.edu.
