Student Participation and Influence in Education : Possibilities and Challenges

Education is one way for society to promote active engagement and participation as forms of civic responsibility. The decline in academic achievement in schools in Europe, and particular in Swedish schools, can be addressed through working with issues related to teaching, where student participation is an important part. In this article, we aim to illustrate and exemplify how student participation can be described and understood as a continuous process that includes both students’ influence over formal decision-making and student active education. The content of the text emerges from a research overview (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2015), in which current research about student participation and influence in schools was collected, illuminated, analysed and discussed. The article illustrates existing challenges and opportunities identified in educational research, relating to students’ influence over decision-making processes and students being active in their education. The article concludes with a few thoughts about the future, including how student voices are becoming a clearer part of school improvement. Furthermore, we discuss the need for staff training, organisational conditions for developing participation work and the importance of further educational research that will highlight student participation and influence.