Peer-reviewed article
Voice-Inclusive Practice (vip): A Charter for Authentic Student Engagement
Jonathon Sargeant, Jenna K. Gillett‐Swan ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper presents Voice-Inclusive Practice (VIP), a framework for meaningfully including children's voices in educational decision-making and planning. Despite international commitments to children's participation in education, the document argues that children's perspectives remain underutilised in schools. The paper provides principles to guide education professionals in seeking and incorporating children's views into pedagogy and educational reform. It aims to help educators implement authentic student engagement while respecting children's participatory rights.
Key points
- Children's contribution to education remains underutilised despite UNCRC commitments to active and authentic involvement
- Educational reform continues to ignore the child's view despite emphasis on children's participation
- Voice-Inclusive Practice involves processes that actively engage children on matters affecting them
- The framework includes child perspective in planning, decision-making and pedagogy
- The paper provides VIP principles to enable participatory rights of children in education settings
Limitations
This document presents a framework and principles rather than empirical evidence of implementation or outcomes. It does not provide data on whether or how VIP improves children's well-being, educational achievement, or actual participation levels in schools.
Abstract
In an age of high stakes testing, diversified communication, educational transformation and pedagogical evolution, the child’s contribution to education remains underutilised. Despite the emphasis on children’s active and authentic involvement in educational decision making in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (uncrc), educational reform continues to ignore the child’s view. In contexts where the child’s voice is welcomed, there remains little guidance for education professionals on how to seek and incorporate children’s perspectives in a practically focused way. By initiating Voice-Inclusive Practice (vip), educators will be better positioned to take action that supports the imperatives of educational change. Voice-Inclusive Practice is represented by processes that actively engage with children on matters that affect them and includes the child’s perspective in planning, decision making and pedagogy. This paper provides an elaboration of the vip principles that enable the participatory rights of the child in education settings.