Mr Kevin Mackay
Dandenong North Primary School
Dandenong, Victoria, Australia
The Afghani refugee girls who attend my primary school, near Melbourne, in Victoria, have a view of student voice that is quite different to that of their Aussie classmates. For them, being able to say ' Good morning ' at the start of every school day, as they are welcomed into a warm room by a qualified and understanding teacher, is the exercise of real power. In a sense, they now have the ' student voice ' they only dreamed about in Afghanistan.
One eleven year old Afghani boy, now living in Australia, wrote: ' Life compared to here is way different, the lifestyle and everything else. Here you go to school to get educated and become a better person, but in Afghanistan you don ' t have the opportunity to go to school ' .
How do Primary Students Understand ' Student Voice ' ?
A random sample of 11 to 12-year-old girls were asked the following question: ' What if young people thought schools were about them? ' Their replies suggested a belief that they could tell if schools ' were about them ' , because schools ' have teachers ' and ' they ' re teaching ' . ' They are educating me. ' These children believed that the teachers they knew had an ability to know what, and how, they were feeling as individuals. Generally, they felt that their teachers had a sense of what the children wanted to do while they were at school. Importantly, the children in the sample were sure that if schools were indeed about them, the teachers would empathise. In ' childspeak ' , ' they would be worried about you ' .
This perception represents an interesting insight into the manifestation of a ' student voice ' . It is easy to think that this term refers to some democratic arrangement whereby students formally propose ideas and suggestions and then, perhaps, exercise a vote to determine a course of action. However, the concept of a ' student voice ' being the sum of student voices is only part-way to describing this manifestation. It is much more complicated than that. It has been postulated that, overall, ' communication ' comprises only 7% of spoken language, 38% of body language, and a massive 55% by attitude.
The attitudes of students - or even more powerfully, the collective attitude of a student body - has a critical influence on the culture of a school. School improvement is critically dependent upon the student culture.
Do They Really Want to Learn?
When teachers are surveyed on their morale and the organisational health of their school, they are often asked whether or not they think the students ' want to learn ' . The ' wanting to learn ' attitude of students is related to their degree of self-management and their ability to make responsible decisions (both necessary elements of social competence). ' Socially competent ' learning environments depend upon the development of attitudes linked to fairness and inclusiveness between students and students, and students and teachers.
This is the notion of social capital. Social capital for students includes the critical characteristics of social organisations, such as trust, behavioural expectations and relationships that can improve the effectiveness of schools by facilitating shared improvement goals.
The Centrality of Student Attitude
The single most powerful student influence for the improvement of schools is the attitude of the students. In order to bring about school improvement, it is the attitudes of the participants in relation to the need, importance and urgency for change that will be the critical determinant. How, then, can schools undertake to improve social capital by aligning attitudes more closely with the goals and values of a school? This can be done by:
•Creating a ' school ethos ' ;
•Modelling desirable traits;
•Reinforcing and shaping behaviours; and,
•Selecting students.
Creating an ethos . When leaders are being selected to lead schools, one of the most likely interview questions relates to an applicant ' s ' vision ' for the school. The ' vision ' that is enunciated will inevitably refer to the characteristics, spirit or attitudes of the people who are, or will be, part of the school community. What if students were actually represented as part of the selection process for school leaders?
Modelling. The teachers of a school will be emulated by their students in terms of their behaviour. This will include how they relate to each other, how they relate to students, how they align with the stated values of the school, and what their attitudes are in relation to the issues that are important to children. Improve the alignment of teachers ' goals and values with those of the school, and there will be an improvement in the attitude of children towards their learning, and towards each other. What if students were allowed to choose from a short-list of teachers who would teach them?
Reinforcing and shaping. Attitudinal change can be slow and difficult to discern. One of the indirect ways in which attitudes can be discerned is by behaviours exhibited in particular situations or contexts. Inferences can be made, that the observable behaviours are the result of certain ways or habits of thinking. By a positive and conscious process of reinforcing observed behaviours/attitudes that are conducive to the achievement of school goals, the behaviours/attitudes of students can be incrementally ' shaped ' to achieve both an individual and a collective shift.
Selecting students. What if schools selected students who aspired to, or exhibited, behaviours already consistent with the values and goals of the school? The collective attitude of the student cohort could be artificially manipulated to more quickly bring about school improvement change. The more refined and discriminatory the selection process, the more rapid the progress towards the desired school improvement.
Ultimately, good ' schools are those where children are connected and feel that they are part of the school. They belong and feel important. Synergies result when there is a sense of ' team ' , a common purpose or a shared endeavour. This is a situation where the achievement of the team can be greater than could have been expected by aggregating the achievements of the individuals. This group culture building is one of the most important means of achieving school improvement. Any coach of a high-performing team will confirm that aligning the attitudes of team members is key to their motivation, and therefore key to the improvement of their performance.
About the author
Mr Kevin Mackay is Principal of Dandenong North Primary School, in Victoria, Australia. He has been a teacher and principal for more than 40 years. In that time, Mr Mackay has taught in specialist and regular schools, tutored adults enrolled in teacher-education units at Deakin University and published a number of articles in educational periodicals and journals. Dandenong North Primary School won a curriculum innovation award for a student self-esteem development program in 1993. The school caters for a multicultural mix of students, with many ' new arrival ' children who are refugees from Afghanistan and other war-torn countries.
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