There is an increasing awareness of the importance of including learners and their families in making decisions that affect them. European and international organisations now prioritise promoting learner involvement in decision-making, as shown in a recent webinar, co-organised by the Agency and UNESCO. As such, the overall goal of the Agency’s Voices into Action (VIA) activity is to show effective ways of promoting the voices of learners and their families in decision-making processes, in order to build better, more inclusive education systems.
To begin the VIA work, desk research was undertaken to understand why and how to engage learners and their families in decision-making processes. The resulting Literature Review provides key evidence on meaningful ways to involve learner and family voices in educational decision-making. It summarises important European and international policy information on the topic and sets out key research knowledge from the past 20 years.
The Literature Review also introduces the ‘VIA framework for meaningful participation’. The framework builds on existing models of participation and provides specific actions to help stakeholders include the voices of learners and their families in decisions that affect them. The framework has informed phase 2 of the VIA activities, which will result in an overall report on the VIA activities and findings, an infographic and an online toolkit. The toolkit will provide further guidance on how to act upon and truly embed learner and family voices in educational decision-making.
For more information on the VIA activity and its outputs, visit the VIA web area.