Liberating Student Voice: A Transformative Approach to Professional Development in Higher Education

Abstract

Student voice is so much more than feedback and evaluations; rather, it involves bringing students into the teaching-learning conversation: welcoming them as they are, valuing their experiences and contributions, and socially co-constructing knowledge within the curriculum space itself. Pedagogy and ethics need to be nurtured and developed to facilitate student agency and voice - and that is the role of our Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (PGCert) in Higher Education programme. This conceptual paper explores the transformative impact of the programme as a case study of liberatory and experiential pedagogy that fosters student voice from within: with staff-as-students. Drawing on collaborative contributions from current and past PGCert participants, the paper weaves together short vignettes to reveal how co-created teaching, learning, and assessment practices have fostered student voice within participants - and how this, in turn, has allowed them to meaningfully integrate student voice, agency, and action into their own teaching and in support of their students.