Student voice

And I do still think so many people are stuck in protecting the adult's comfort, right, and just continuing to do what they like or what makes them comfortable 'cause adults don't like change and don't like coming out of their comfort zone.

But we have gotta get out of our comfort zone, and we have to involve the student voice in moving forward.

Absolutely.

Well-stated, Dr. Dutt.

Now, Amy is an experienced NSW public school teacher who is passionate about creating inclusive and future-focused learning environments through the purposeful use of technology.

With experience across diverse school contexts in teaching, leading and system roles, Amy has seen firsthand how technology can amplify student voice and create more accessible learning opportunities.

Now Amy's joining us here today to share her journey into teaching the importance of connecting technology with strong pedagogy and how teachers and leaders can use digital tools to enhance learning, engagement and inclusion in their classrooms.

So thanks for joining us, Amy.

And we're still learning.

And we're really kind of working with a lot of our partners, our vendor partners, to look at what's new and what's coming because this space of inclusive learning workforce and inclusive education is just growing exponentially and being able to use technology to empower that is huge.

And you've talked about how technology has supported student voice.

Can you talk us through some examples of what you've used in your classroom?

Day of AI is killing it, right? This just came out last week.

This is Student Voices in AI, Day of AI.

So what do we have here?

Yeah.

So Student Voices in AI is an in-school youth council program that prepares middle and high school students to actively participate in shaping AI policymaking within their schools.

So there's technical literacy, ethical reflection, civic decision-making.

The kids go through this like 12-week experience to then conduct some research, engage in dialogue with school community stakeholders, and then they present some formal AI policy to support responsible tech use to their schools.

And I often, you know, will point folks to there's research about this concept we have as educators, literacies.

I am forgetting the name of the paper, but the main premise is you cannot have a literacy without student voice.

You have to be talking to students about, well, you know, if we have math literacy, like how do you see math as being useful in your life? What are you doing with math in your day to day? And I would say this is really great to be listening to students without judgment, to have that relational awareness.

What are you using this technology for? What are you hearing about this technology? What are your concerns? And how do you feel about, you know, the way that education works? is kind of provided to you as a story.

So that sort of research informed development the whole way through, you talked a little bit about working with the students and hearing what they want and all that.

So I think, what is the role of student voice in all of this? What role does it play?

Well, interestingly with this, I mean, we are very fortunate with our principal has an incredible connection with our students.

So when we started floating this idea, the first thing she did was she brought in groups of two or three students into her office and said, we're thinking about this.

What do you think? And straight away, we're getting that student voice into there.

And pretty much like there was a consensus across the student body that this is a great idea, even if it's not for me, it's great for my friends.

So, you know, bringing that student voice in at that level was great for us to feel like, yes, when we make this decision around this, we're making this with the best interests of our students in mind.

We're not saying we're the experts here.

So that was obviously not an intentional exclusion from the discussion.

But I think it's an important point, because I think what we're saying is that the validity of the decisions that we make requires that there is some kind of student voice.

And it's not necessarily having bodies there, but having a mechanism by which the student voice can be heard.

Because if we define flexibility as, I don't know, teaching in some periods of time or whatever, we might actually find that for students that's not relevant.

They prefer to have a kind of intensive burst and then be able to do something else.