ABSTRACT

Student voice across various contexts attempts to propose a deeper appreciation of the dynamics of curriculum making. However, little is known about how student voice interacts with culture, power relations, and student knowledge, particularly in assessment planning. Informed by democratic assessment, the current study investigated how student voice within higher education is either expressed or oppressed during assessment and what attitudes Iranian university students hold towards the concept of voice. To this aim, the data was accrued from 43 TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) students by means of interviews and open-ended questionnaires. The results indicated that students’ autonomy was suppressed, and students’ agency was restricted in the decision-making phase. Moreover, it was evidenced that students held superficial views towards student voice constructs within democratic assessment, which could have been because of their previous experiences. The implications are to raise awareness towards student voice complexities and how creating democratic spaces for students is culture-embedded.

摘要

不同背景下的学生声音试图提出对课程制作动态的更深层次的理解。然而，对于学生的声音如何与文化、权力关系和学生知识相互作用知之甚少，尤其是在评估计划中。在民主评估的指导下，本研究调查了高等教育中学生的声音在评估过程中是如何表达或压制的，以及伊朗大学生对声音概念的态度。为此，我们通过访谈和开放式问卷从 43 名 TEFL（英语作为外语教学）学生中收集数据。结果表明，在决策阶段，学生的自主性受到抑制，学生的能动性受到限制。而且，有证据表明，学生对民主评估中的学生声音结构持有肤浅的看法，这可能是因为他们以前的经历。其含义是提高对学生声音复杂性的认识，以及如何为学生创造民主空间是文化嵌入的。