Nurturing enquiry spaces for authentic student as researchers

In this paper we reflexively engage with our experiences as a university-based team facilitating rights-informed students-as-researchers projects in two Scottish secondary schools. he UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC: 1989) is explicit in Scottish education. There is continuous development of the enactment of children’s rights in schools, with particular emphasis in recent years on student voice (Article 12). Students as Researchers (Fielding & Bragg 2003) could be considered as the pinnacle of rights-based student voice work. Its premise and structure support decision-making and leadership of children and young people in the school setting (Mitra 2006). In optimising young peoples’ participatory role, either independently or alongside adults, Students as Researchers recognises their expertise, and pushes back against critiques of student tokenism or consultation at the lower end of Fielding’s (2011) revised classification of partnership. Yet, as with any practice, the extent to which young people’s role is truly ‘as researcher’ depends on many aspects of the time and space created and inhabited by participants (Wall 2023).
School settings are places where adults hold much of the power and largely shape students’ experiences. Therefore, there is a need to examine the role of adults in facilitating these spaces and to critique the associated practices (Lodge & Lynch 2002). Currently much of the Students as Researcher literature focuses on the children and young people’s role, experiences and outcomes (Sandoval & Messiou 2022), yet the extent to which the process represents true student ownership of the research is often unclear or hidden. A critical examination of the markers of quality in these spaces is much needed.

In 2019 our university team was commissioned by a Scottish local authority to develop practitioner enquiry approaches with teachers (aligned with Hall and Wall 2019). At the request of the local authority, this project was expanded to students in 2022. Throughout the two-year implementation, we noticed several key characteristics that shaped how Students as Researchers enacted student voice within the unique context of the two very different schools in the same town – one newly-built non-denominational (616 students) and one Catholic school with older facilities (588 students). These key characteristics, which reveal the effect adult roles have on the project, include: (1) school ethos and culture (e.g., student voice, practitioner enquiry, school identity, student-teacher relationships); (2) cultural and ethos influence on the development of delivery model (e.g., who was selected and how project parameters were determined); and (3) positioning of university researchers and university spaces.

All university team members are former school teachers, and our role in this project involved facilitating border-crossing between school and university spaces. Our fieldwork diaries and the outputs from the two case study schools serve as the data sources for reflexive commentary that engages what quality might look like and what tensions and dilemmas were apparent. This analysis explores to what extent we identified with our role as researchers, with the students, and with the teachers, and what tensions became evident in our interactions with both. For example, we observed a tension particularly between student selection for the projects and the agency with which students pursued their project. Who gets to be a student researcher may or may not be a decision made by students themselves, which has implications for enactment of student voice among both participating students and the general school population.

Our learning from this project shapes the guidance we offer to adults who facilitate university-school Students as Researcher partnerships. We focus particularly on the ways different school structures, values, and ethos require adult facilitators to adapt their input, amplifying young people’s experiences and interests within institutional structures that may also constrain student voice. Finally, we explicate the key considerations that can inform Students as Researcher programme design, accounting for the realities of contemporary UK schools. In addition to offering another dimension to Mitra’s (2006) model, Fielding’s (2011) typology and Sandoval & Messiou’s (2022) phases, this set of considerations explains the role of adults in this process and how instrumental they can be in developing spaces for authentic Students as Researchers projects.