Engagement and Impact

A core focus of the CCYP is to build collaboration between our researchers and partner organisations beyond academia.

This helps to ensure the research we do is not only relevant, rigorous and responsive to their needs but that knowledge, methods and resources generated from our research will directly benefit policy and practice. Our longstanding approach to engagement produces research that is making a positive contribution to policy and practice aimed at improving the lives of children and young people.

Here is just one example of how the CCYP’s engagement creates a pathway to impact.

CCYP graph scales

Recasting approaches to educational improvement

The role of student ‘voice’

Overview:

There is broad consensus in educational policy, practice and research that student participation, at an individual, school and system level, benefits both students and schools. An increasing body of evidence suggests student participation that is authentic, embedded and sustainable has the potential to transform education, build stronger school communities, engage and motivate students, and enhance their wellbeing. But how much voice, choice or influence do students really have in their learning and in school life more broadly? While student participation is tacitly manifested in discourses around ‘student-centredness’, ‘personalised learning’, ‘inquiry-based learning’, ‘differentiated pedagogy’, ‘project-based learning’ and the like, there remains a persistent lack of conceptual clarity around what student ‘participation’ means, contestation over purpose and benefits, and uncertainty about how to culturally embed and effectively facilitate participation in school contexts.

Taking our research on student participation as a ‘case’ for impact, the below presentation explores some of the possibilities and challenges in utilising research to inform change in educational policy and practice. We examine how and why this collaborative research agenda around student participation, led by the Centre for Children and Young People at SCU, has evolved over time. The applied emphasis of the presentation provides an opportunity to unpack the evolving story around ‘pathway to impact’ across several projects and allows a close and critical look at what authentic ‘engagement’ with schools and education systems means and requires.

Presentation: