Empowering Students Through Listening To Student Voice

Reflecting on my Inquiry

Inquiring into how I can develop students oracy so they can express themselves and their learning.

What is now happening as a result of my improvement actions?

At the start of DIMC Maths Problem Solving sessions, I noticed heightened student interest in knowing which group would be working with me. I initially thought it was because they wanted to take part in the sessions, however, the opposite was true.

I thought this was the perfect opportunity to find out why.

The students sat in a circle and openly discussed their feeling about the sessions.

This showed me that my students are able to openly discuss how they feel about learning tasks and able to explain why they feel that way. They agree and disagree with each other with justification. This is done in a respectful and supportive way.

They are beginning to hold free-flowing conversations, listening to each other and interjecting naturally without having to put their hands up to share. They also offer alternative suggestions to learning tasks.

How has this impacted on my learners? 

The students have grown in confidence in sharing their thinking. They support each other and make connections with each other, by agreeing or disagreeing and offering differing opinions and justifications. This creates a solidarity and polarity among the students. This also shows them that people are entitled to their own opinions and that their opinions may not be the same as others.

Students are not just passive learners, they have a say in shaping their learning environment and learning opportunities. Hopefully, this raises student engagement. Also, it allows for conversations about the learning process and how it feels to be a learner.

One student stated that she didn't like Maths Problem Solving because it was hard, this sparked another student who said that he found it frustrating because he knew the answer but had to explain it to others which he found difficult. We were then able as a group to talk about how it felt to be in the dip, at the uni-structural or multi-structural level, as well as teaching someone else involved higher order thinking and skills.

What further adjustments might be worth considering?

Those students that did enjoy the sessions were less vocal. I would like to revisit it tomorrow by doing a PMI as a class to evaluate it. This I will use to reshape my delivery of the sessions.

I will also feedback to them the changes that I am going to make to my practice. This is empowering them as learners.

My initial thoughts following this discussion are:

-Shortening the sessions, with far less teacher talk, so students don't get bored.

-To think harder about the type of problems I'm giving them. Maybe they are too challenging. This is something that I have discussed with the facilitators and colleagues. I think the careful planning of the problem may be the key.

-More contextualized real-life problems may spark more interest?


Do they feel like their voice will be/was listened to? I will make sure I check in with them to see if they perceive this to be true.

Moving forward from here, does the voicing of their ideas about their learning have an impact on my practice? In reality, do I follow through with their ideas? I need to ensure I do. What is the impact of this?