Do Students Develop School?!

Students and student representatives as co-actors of school development and system reform Schools as we know them today are not only “made” by teachers, headpersons, educational politicians, the inspectorate etc., but also by the contributions of students. Nevertheless there is only very little reference to the students’ contribution to the formation of schools in the learned literature. The research project (Do) students develop school!? aims 1. to analyse (sccondary school) students’ and their representatives’ roles and actions in school life and, in particular, in which way they co-construct the form and processes of schools (using categories provided by a theory of educational governance) 2. to support student representatives in fulfilling their role in a constructive and democratic way by providing them with a) feedback about their work by other students and b) giving them access to different concepts of exercising such representative tasks; 3. to develop feedback tools which are made available to student representatives for collecting feedback about their work and which allow to build up a long-term database about their activities and the perception of these activities by the students. Different “module teams” consisting of secondary school students, teachers, researchers and – in one case – teacher education students are responsible for the work on seven modules which use quantitative or qualitative research methods. Continuity and cohesion of the project modules is ensures by a steering group including representatives of all project partners.