Tag: Student Voice

What young people need It seems to me that the crucial commodity that young people need in order to find and deepen their interests and identity, and to learn how to live with others is TIME. Time to think, time to wonder, time to question, time to create, time to hang out with their friends, time […]

What Students Say Matters Most schools do not look like a democratic society at all. Imagine a school where democracy is lived on a daily basis, where students have a say in the rules of the school, from the schedule to the dress code or safety policies. These schools exist in the world of democratic […]

This article describes my doctoral research into shared decision-making in the classroom and offers hope and encouragement to teachers and school leaders who seek greater collaboration with their pupils. In my mid-fifties, having worked as an Educational Psychologist for over 30 years, I decided that I needed to find a way to reinvigorate my professional […]

“Why are those teachers screaming at those kids?” my son James asked me, with a look of true shock and concern on his face. He was observing some teachers across the cafeteria as they were berating a group of students sitting at lunchroom tables. It was James’ first time attending a public school class. The […]

Transcript from Derry Hannam’s talk at the International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) on 30th October 2020 #WebIDEC2020: I must warn you that although this lecture is not a lecture or a speech or even just a talk – it is a story – and that still gives me the opportunity to say a lot!! “Another […]

Rather than impose my own idea of the kind of structures that the class democracy should have I decided that we would make it up as we went along by dealing with issues as they arose. The one thing I was clear about was the need for a class meeting. As the school required that […]

These papers are the reports of the first and second stages in the ‘I was a teenage governor’ project, organised by the Institute for Public Policy Research in partnership with the Citizenship Foundation and Derry Hannam – Specialist Consultant in Pupil Participation. This was intended to be used as a practical tool for any school […]

This study from 2001, by Derry Hannam (a now retired state secondary school teacher, deputy/acting headteacher and Ofsted inspector) evaluates the impact of the student participation aspects of the Citizenship Order on standards of education in secondary schools. Hypothesis The investigation set out to test the hypothesis that “in schools that are already taking the […]