Every voice matters: powerful pupil support through interprofessional collaboration with the pupil as the pivotal figure

Many initiatives are already being taken to sharpen the cooperation between teachers, counsellors, support workers and other partners (from health care, welfare, etc.) in the broad educational field. The demand for an integrated approach, which is paramount in the Decree on pupil guidance (Flemish Government, 2018), to meet pupil needs is high.

Research theme: Diversity and inclusion

Field of interest: Education

Duration: 1/09/2021 - 31/08/2023

Financing: PWO

It is a challenge to deal with the growing diversity and to involve students (and their parents) more fully in the development of broad basic care and the policy on student guidance. To really listen to the voice of the students!

With this research project, we want to connect output from previous research with each other, together with the co-financing partners (UCLL and TOPunt vzw), and thus see what gaps there may still be.

Listening to the voice of the student

Based on the challenges of involving students (and their parents) more fully and dealing with the growing diversity, we pose the following research question:

What are the educational needs of students and how can professionalization of the care continuum support interprofessional collaboration?

We place the voice of the student central. Based on the educational needs that emerge, we want to motivate education professionals to think together about their own professionalization needs:

How can different education professionals work together based on the voice of their students?
What learning questions emerge from listening to students?
How does this motivate a team to professionalize?
What influence does this listening to the voice of students have on the action research?

How do you listen to your students?

We would like to provide some materials for inspiration:

Listening to every voice

You can best bring about targeted changes if you listen to all voices. As a team, it is therefore valuable to reflect on how the collaboration at school is going: is there open communication, are there shared goals, are roles and responsibilities clear,...? The Pronet-Quickscan has been adapted to be used within school teams to make an analysis of the collaboration. We are also working on a version that you can go through with your students. Because every voice matters!