Young people as co-researchers: enabling student participation in educational practice

This article explores the way student participation can be incorporated into educational practice, in particular in the form of the student participation process 'students as co-researchers'. It is argued that enabling student participation, in the sense that students are involved in decisions that affect them in their school lives, is valuable and should be pursued for various motives. One of these motives is a rights-based motive following from the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the declaration Education for All. Moreover, student and teacher learning are identified as other important motives for intensive student participation practices. An action research project in the Netherlands conducted by teams of teachers, students and museum educators serves to illustrate the student participation process and the strategy for teacher learning. First, the concept of student participation will be explored and related to teacher's professional development. Second, the characteristics and the intensity of the student participation in this case are described along six dimensions of participation. Next, the implications for the learning and professional development of teachers who participated in the Dutch project are explored. The four domains of the Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth serve as the structuring framework.