Pedagogy, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is defined as ‘the method and practice of teaching’. However, many teachers are not familiar with the word pedagogy and its role in education.
Though its meaning is important, pedagogy can be broken down to what many like to call, best practices. Either way, teachers need to be open to look at a variety of pedagogical or best practices that promote student voice in their classroom.
What best practices do you currently have to share about using student voice in your classroom?
The Enthusiastic Learner 
Allison, I appreciate here how you have connected pedagogy to “best practices”, but I wonder if that term can sometimes be misunderstood to be those strategies that a teacher has always used irregardless if they were the “best” for students, or indeed the “best” for scaffolding and/or supporting student learning. For me, “best practices” always poses the reflexive question, “Best for whom”? I have begun to think of those ideas and strategies that position students in positive, action-oriented ways as “promising practices”… for they call to the promise that is inside each learner. .
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You have sparked an interesting train of thought that in fact, cross my mind yesterday while listening to an interview an musician/producer named Diplo. In the interview, he was questioned for not being so kind to another artists record. Diplo then defended his statement arguing that musicians, and really anyone for that matter, should not settle for status quo. Instead, individuals should constantly be pushing the limits of finding new and creative ways to make music, or anything for that matter, better.
You certainly have sparked thoughts for my next post.
🙂
A
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Hi Allison,
Your blog is great. I really like this your topic about pedagogy and giving students a voice. It is an important issue to look into. One of the ways I get my students involved is what I learned from my teachers in my high school days. One of my home room teachers started what she called “Stock taking Friday” which really worked very well and turned many things around in my entire school. On every last Friday of the month we had a class meeting where we look into the classroom activities for the month, we looked at what went well and what did not work well and the next steps. Students were able to voice out their points on issues and even brought solutions to solving certain issues that came up. It was shared moments of experience for us. Other teachers bought the idea and eventually it became part of the whole school culture. Because I went to a boarding school, our house teachers as they were called in those days also started house meetings or dormitory meetings where our voices became part of the house decisions. As a teacher, I do that with my students after lunch on last Fridays of the month and believe me it really works. After meetings we have free time/ treat time and then we do class cleaning and then go home. Some parents have started contributing to our Friday treats because they see the positive impart it is having on their children. From the meetings we have a new set of students who are in charge of that month’s activities in the classroom and it makes our lives and learning easy .This same method we use in our family with our children and it creates that bond of having a family time together to plan for the family. Many times my children will be the ones suggesting on what we have to do, even when I have the same thoughts but they take greater responsibility when the ideas come from them. From my thinking I believe that “Giving a voice is far better than imposing a voice”
Gloria
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