Student voice in educational change: Approaches to enhancing motivation within the classroom

Student voice (SV), referring to the concept and prac-tices of involving students in educational decisions,has been gaining popularity due to its promising ef-fects on student need satisfaction and academicmotivation. Definitions of SV approaches, their vari-ety, and the benefits that various approaches havefor students' need satisfaction and learning motiva-tion are crucial for effective practical implementationand future studies on SV. The present study exploreswhether SV approaches vary on the components ofcurriculum design about which students can and wantto have a voice as well as examining the relationshipbetween various approaches to need satisfactionand autonomous motivation. The relationship be-tween not adapting approaches to students' wisheswith need satisfaction and autonomous motivationhas also been examined. Exploratory factor analy-sis revealed three distinctive approaches: content,evaluation, and lesson practicalities. Structural anal-ysis substantiated the benefits that SV approachesmay have for students' needs and motivation, withthe strongest relationships shown between content-based approaches and need satisfaction. Adverserelationships were found when approaches did notcorrespond with the students' wish for SV. SV ap-proaches that strike a balance between listening tostudents' voices and challenging students to gradu-ally gain more SV about content may prove to be themost advantageous for students' need satisfactionand learning motivation.