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Authorizing Students’ Perspectives: Toward Trust, Dialogue, and Change in Education

Director of the Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Program, 101 N. Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010; acooksat{at}haverford.edu. Her research interests include integrating the perspectives of high school students into preservice teacher education, rethinking education through the metaphor of translation, and facilitating professional development for college faculty, librarians, and instructional technologists

This article argues for attending to the perspectives of those most directly affected by, but least often consulted about, educational policy and practice: students. The argument for authorizing student perspectives runs counter to U.S. reform efforts, which have been based on adults’ ideas about the conceptualization and practice of education. This article outlines and critiques a variety of recent attempts to listen to students, including constructivist and critical pedagogies, postmodern and poststructural feminisms, educational researchers’ and social critics’ work, and recent developments in the medical and legal realms, almost all of which continue to unfold within and reinforce adults’ frames of reference. This discussion contextualizes what the author argues are the twin challenges of authorizing student perspectives: a change in mindset and changes in the structures in educational relationships and institutions.

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