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Students’ and Teachers’ Understanding of Student Influence in Swedish Rights-Based Schools
Örebro University, Sweden.
Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (starting 2013), Department of Educational Studies (from 2013).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5157-3322
2023 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

To find support for their work with children’s rights, schools around the world have turned to NGOs that offer schoolprograms aiming to strengthen children’s rights at school. Evaluations undertaken of such school programs for children’srights have shown good effects, for example on school climate, relations, behaviour, and children's influence (Howe &Covell, 2010; Sebba & Robinson, 2010; Halås Torbjörnsen, 2020), but also raised some concerns (Sebba & Robinson,2010; Mejias & Starkey, 2012; Webb, 2014; Dunhill, 2019). The evidence presented for a correlation between learningabout rights and positive effects such as respectful behaviour and increased student influence is, according to Jerome andcolleagues (Jerome et al., 2015), rather weak. The authors argue that most studies have focused more on implementationprocesses than outcomes. They also highlight methodological weaknesses in some studies, in the form of low responserates in survey studies, few interviews in interview studies, mainly drawing on teachers’ views and narratives, or the viewsof students that were selected by teachers. To shed better light on the impact of school programs for children’s rights, thereseems to be a need for further research with a rigorous research design.

Most children’s rights programs offered by NGO’s put children’s right to be involved in processes of deliberation anddecision making in school in the center of attention. Students’, teachers’ and policymakers’ perceptions and experiences ofchildren’s influence is also a well-researched topic (Johnson, 2017; Perry-Hazan, 2021). Studies have often reported thatchildren find their opportunities to influence matters that are relevant to them to be very limited (Emerson & Lloyd, 2017;Lake, 2011).

One of the programs available is UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools Award (RRSA), which was developed by UNICEFUK. The UK version was brought to Sweden and modified by UNICEF Sweden to suit the Swedish school culture. It wasalso renamed to Rights-based school. Since the start in 2010 the Swedish version of the program has spread and is nowused in about 30 Swedish schools.

No research-based evaluation of Rights-based school has so far been done. Commissioned by UNICEF Sweden, wecurrently undertake a large-scale evaluation research project, aiming to elucidate if, and in that case how, Rights-basedschool strengthens schools’ work with children’s rights. In this presentation we report on the first findings, focusing onstudent influence. One of the main objectives of Rights-based School is to increase students’ influence in school, specifiedas: “Each student is regularly given opportunities to take part in the development of school and to express her/his meaningand be heard in matters that concern her/hem. Decision makers are given the opportunity to take children’s views intoaccount and to provide feedback on decisions.”

The research questions addressed in our initial analysis are:(1) How do teachers in Rights-based schools view and describe their work with student influence?(2) How do students in Rights-based schools view and experience their influence in school?(3) Can differences between teachers’ and students’ views be identified?(4) Can differences between schools that are new to the program, and a school that have worked with the program for along time be identified?

The initial findings reported on in this paper present an opportunity to reflect on the continuing work and analyses. The main study will when ready not only provide grounds for UNICEF Sweden to revise their Rights-based school program, butwill also contribute to the international child rights community with knowledge about how organised rights-based schoolprograms may strengthen children’s rights in educational settings, as well as point out aspects in such programs that needto be reconsidered.

Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used: The data for this paper was created in five different schools that use Rights-based school. Four of the schools had juststarted working with the program, while one school had used it for eight years. This school makes it possible to examinewhether long engagement makes a difference. Interviews with teachers and students in years 2, 5 and 8 were conductedduring two following years (2021 and 2022). One more set of interviews will be done in 2023. Initial analysis has beencarried out of the data from teachers and students in year 5, and it is the result of this analysis that is reported in the currentpaper. The sample for this analysis is:2021: 20 teachers, 61 students (28 interviews)2022: 18 teachers, 67 students (34 interviews)Total: 38 teachers, 128 students (62 interviews)

The interviews were semi-structured. Teachers were individually interviewed and the students were mostly interviewed inpairs. Questions were asked to understand how students experience their influence in school and how teachers viewstudent influence.

The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Qualitative content analysis (Bengtsson, 2016; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) wasundertaken to understand meanings of student influence expressed by the interviewees. The analysis was done with the aidof NVivo software. Frequency analysis complemented the content analysis to identify which meanings were mostrepresented in the teachers’ and students’ statements.

By conducting a large number of interviews with both teachers and students who has not been selected by principals orteachers, we claim that our research design avoids weaknesses pointed out in previous studies. The large number ofinterviews provides rigor to the content analysis and comparison of students’ and teachers’ perceptions. The mainevaluation study also includes interviews with teachers and students in schools that do not use Rights-based school. Theinclusion of these will significantly strengthen the findings of the evaluation study. These interviews have not yet beenanalysed and are therefore not included in this paper.

Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings: In schools that use Rights-based school, various councils (student council, food council, safety council) seem to serve asimportant arenas for realising students’ right to influence matters that concern them. In the new schools the students alsobring up less formal ways to influence their school day and environment. They say that they can just talk to the teachers ifthere is something they want. They find this mode of influence more efficient than going through the formal processes. This informal influence is not mentioned by any student in the school that has used the program for eight years. Thus, thisfinding raises questions of whether the program functions limiting to some kinds of student influence, by emphasisinginfluence via formal processes.

The teachers almost unanimously express that the content of classroom work is directed by the curriculum, and thatstudents therefore cannot exercise much influence over educational content. However, by involving the students indecisions about how to work teachers have found ways to involve students in classroom decision making. The students donot seem to agree with this picture. In the new schools, influence over working methods is only mentioned in a third of theinterviews, and in the established school possibilities to affect working methods is only mentioned in two interviews, thestudents even accentuating that working methods are planned and decided by the teachers. A striking finding is thatstudents’ perception of what they can influence most in classroom work is the content.

When asked about what they believe to be limiting for student influence, the students express very clearly that the mainhindrance for student influence in school is dire economic circumstances. Interestingly, when teachers are asked aboutwhat they think limits students’ influence, only one teacher mentions economy as a hindering factor.

References

Dunhill, A. (2019). The language of the human rights of children: a critical discourse analysis. (Doctoral dissertation,University of Hull).

Emerson, L., & Lloyd, K. (2017). Measuring children’s experience of their right to participate in school and community: Arights-based approach. Children & Society, 31, 120-133.

Howe, R.B., & Covell, K. (2010). Miseducating children about their rights. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 5(2),91-102.

Jerome, L., Emerson, L., Lundy, L., & Orr, K. (2015). Teaching and learning about child rights. A study of implementation in26 countries. Queens University Belfast/UNICEF.Johnson, V. (2017). Moving beyond voice in children and young people’s participation. Action Research, 15(1), 104-124.

Lake, K. (2011). Character education from a children’s rights perspective: An examination of elementary students’perspectives and experience. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 19, 679-690.

Mejias, S., & Starkey, H. (2012). Critical citizens or neo-liberal consumers? Utopian visions and pragmatic uses of humanrights education in a secondary school in England. In Politics, participation & power relations (pp. 119-136). Brill.

Perry-Hazan, L. (2021). Conceptualising conflicts between student participation and other rights and interests. Discourse:Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 42(2), 184-198.

Sebba, J., & Robinson, C. (2010). Evaluation of UNICEF UK’s rights respecting schools award (RRSA). London: UNICEFUK.

Webb, R. (2014). Doing the rights thing: An ethnography of a dominant discourse of rights in a primary school in England(Doctoral dissertation, University of Sussex).

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023.
Keywords [en]
Children's rights, Human rights, Education, Teacher, Human Rights Education
National Category
Educational Sciences
Research subject
Educational Work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-99477OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-99477DiVA, id: diva2:1854490
Conference
The European Conference on Educational Research, Glasgow, Scottland, August, 2023
Available from: 2024-04-25 Created: 2024-04-25 Last updated: 2024-05-14Bibliographically approved

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Isenström, Lisa

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