Democracy learning as failing template for establishing student participation for school improvement: A participatory case study within a secondary school

Abstract

Participation of students is defined as a conditional factor for the acquisition of democracy learning and is increasingly taken into account in Austrian schools. Nevertheless, in contrast to other countries, little research has been conducted in Austria about if or how democracy learning provides a template for the social practice of student participation within school improvements. The current qualitative case study sought to investigate, explanatively from the perspective of school actors, how a secondary school tries to implement a self-imposed demand for more student participation in school improvement by using aspects of democracy learning as template. Qualitative guideline-based interviews using a participative research method were conducted and the data were analysed by means of content-structuring qualitative content analysis. A total of 33 school actors (students, teachers, parents) participated. The two central findings emerged due to marginal rights and a limited understanding of student participation based on democracy learning. First, despite the demand for greater participation in school improvement, students remain dependent on individual actors and can only assert their interests within school objectives and not against the interests of the teachers or the school management. Second, participation within the framework of school development promotes not so much the strengthening of pupils as subjects as the strengthening of the identity of the school’s organization. The individual case study is thus a hypothesis-generating example of how the depoliticized participation rhetoric of imparting democratic competencies leaves the claim to equal consideration of students’ perspectives unfulfilled and ultimately prevents the redistribution of rights of disposal.

Keywords

Student participation school improvement democracy learning case study co-determination participative research

Introduction

Referring to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, schools have the educational mandate to provide students with democratic competencies and political education (Eurydice European Unit, 2005: 13). This makes the active participation of students an indispensable part of the acquisition of democratic competences in citizenship education. In Austria, however, the educational mandate for democratic learning emphasizes cooperation based on partnership. Democratic basic values should be promoted through the provision of participation experiences within lessons and the imparting of knowledge (cf. teaching principle political education or Federal Law Gazette II No 185/2012 and §14 (5a) of the Federal Constitution Act (B-VG¹); abbreviated in §2 of the School Organisation Act). Effective participation in the context of democratic education, however, also requires the possibility of shaping one’s own school through different intensities such as having a say, involvement as well as co-determination and participation becomes an indispensable agenda of school improvement (Böhme and Kramer, 2001; Coelen, 2010: 37; Eikel, 2007: 16).

In this sense, the democratic ideas serve as a template for student participation within school improvement and participatory (Reinhardt, 2009: 127) and democratic school development (Hahn et al., 2015: 209) explicitly call for participation of students in school development and link this assumption, to two objectives. By changing norms, relationships and organizational structures (i) the individual school is to be improved as an organization and (ii) students are to be strengthened as independent subjects (Rihm, 2014: 13). Nevertheless, students have so far been largely neglected as school actors (Althoff, 2014; Hahn et al., 2015; Langer, 2011; Lodge, 2014; Reinhardt, 2009) and have in Austria predominantly the right to advice, information and application as well as to submission of statements (School Education Act (SchUG), in particular §57a–§59b²). Remaining primarily dependent on the provision of informal (in the sense of event-based or unconstitutional) participation opportunities (Bastian, 2009: 8), usually in the classroom or in school design, they can only formulate requests at will and not according to claims (Gamsjäger and Altrichter, 2017).

It is not much of a surprise that empirical results hardly report effective student participation (Althoff, 2014) in the sense of a democratic school improvement. So far, there is only marginal co-determination in decision-making processes (Fleming, 2015; Scanlon, 2012; Watts and Youens, 2007), while more extensive participation is usually possible in projects in informal areas (Leung et al., 2014). Ultimately, the scope of participation tends to become narrowed, decentralized and uncoordinated (Mager and Nowak, 2012), and students can – at best – marginally affect teachers’ or school administrators’ actions (Fatke and Schneider, 2010; Rieker et al., 2016). Teachers often even resist accepting students as rights holders (Urinboyev et al., 2016: 536). The fact, that student participation in practice is restricted to informal spaces and dependent on teachers’ good will, hits students with weak socio-economic background hardest (Arnot and Reay, 2007; Mager and Nowak, 2012).

Because of the lack of reliable, situation- and person-independent offers (Ballhausen and Lange, 2016: 376), a self-determined influence still relies on the respective school culture (Helsper, 2001), which ‘decides’ (Rolff, 2007: 156) how to deal with these framings. Effective participation must therefore change not only the behaviour of the members, but also the organization and its institutional framework (Rolff, 2007: 14). Hence, in the highly regulated school context, the question of distributing power has to be addressed twofold to avoid a simple reproduction of power relationships. First, since power is not evenly distributed within school, power must be recognized as unequal and problematic. Second, for a dynamic notion of partnership a dynamic exchange of power relations between teachers and students is necessary (Hedtke, 2016: 134; Pearce and Wood, 2016: 4; Robinson and Taylor, 2007: 8; Taylor and Robinson, 2009: 172; Wood et al., 2018: 193). A critical distance from the own experiences and views of all school actors is important in order to change them in comparison to those of other school actors. A school must therefore create a conception of dialogue and negotiation and the possibility of change and transformation (Pearce and Wood, 2016: 7; Robinson and Taylor, 2007: 8). Teachers cannot do this individually, so it is necessary that effective student participation as an educational objective becomes a cross-sectional and longitudinal task for school improvement (Beutel, 2016; Stadler-Altmann and Gördel, 2015). The paper therefore addresses the issue of how a secondary school establishes different forms and intensities of participation based on the educational mandate to teach democratic values to improve the school.

Research questions and purpose of the study

Although student participation has been recognized as part of school improvement, little research has been done in Austria on whether or how participation in the context of democracy learning provides a template for the social practice of student participation in school improvement. For an individual case study (Yin, 2003), an Austrian compulsory school (secondary school for 10–14 year olds) was selected, which explicitly anchored student participation in its school documents and established participatory structures that go beyond legal provisions (Mitra et al., 2012). Thus, the school offers a suitable field of investigation for the explorative analysis of the coping with a normatively set of claims within the provisions of the school organization.

Methodical design

By triangulation of the subjective views of different members of the organization, conclusions can be drawn about the design of student participation and its effect as an organizational resource and the organizational processes and structures associated with it, without examining concrete practice (Hartung-Beck and Muslic, 2016; Kleining and Witt, 2001). The case study used a participative research method (Groundwater-Smith and Mockler, 2015). In different settings, several students of the school were integrated³ as co-researchers and trained for all phases of the research project in workshops designed for this purpose. For quality assurance purposes, we recorded the meetings with the student researchers and communicatively validated the first joint analysis results with school participants (Gillett-Swan, 2018). We reflected the implications of the participation of students as co-researchers in writing. Although we cannot completely rule out possible limitations due to the hierarchical teacher–student relationship and partial quality losses due to the interviewing by students, this was outweighed by the general advantages of the participation of student researchers. The quality of the interviews was satisfactory and the co-researches introduced new significant thematic aspects in the compilation of the guidelines and analysis. Thus, both the research object’s tentativeness and the university research personnel’s openness could be guaranteed.

In order to answer the research question, the case study was analysed with regard to two sub-questions: (1) From the point of view of the actors: What are the reasons for student participation and what intensities of participation are possible or should be implemented in order to establish and realize the school-specific participation objective? (Rhetorical concepts guiding student participation) (2) How is student participation implemented and negotiated in school improvement processes as learning content, learning processes and organizational processes (Rihm, 2014: 12)? (Freedom of action)

To consider different positions in the hierarchical structure of the organization and to obtain relevant statements about internal processes (on multilevel issues and multi-perceptivity as a characteristic of validity see Hartung-Beck and Muslic, 2016), a total of 33 qualitative guideline-based interviews were conducted with 10 parents, 8 student representatives (SRs), 5 students, 9 teachers and the school principal. For the selection of interview participants, the principle of generating as many different data as possible through the greatest possible openness was applied (Kleining, 2001: 32). In addition, two protocols of special situations, a protocol of a student parliament (SP), two transcripts of the analysis workshops conducted with the student researchers and a transcript of the communicative validation (CV) with the school’s participants were included in the data corpus.

The data were coded by a procedure based on the considerations of Schreier (2014: 7) and Kuckartz (2016: 97) by means of qualitative content analysis, expanded by a hermeneutic-interpretative aspect. After a consensual validation with an Intercoder agreement of 0.84, the category scheme proved very satisfactory. As the coding of a new interview was satisfactory, too (Kappa 0.69), further modification of the category system was dispensed favouring an artificial increase in reliability (Winkelhager et al., 2008: 11). In order to describe and explain different ideas and to convert them into a model of student participation (similar to axial coding in Grounded Theory Methodology) in (a) action orientations, (b) areas of application and (c) influencing factors, the categories were dimensionalized in a secondary procedure following Kleining (2001).

Findings

In the mission statement and in relevant documents, the secondary school for 10–14 year olds describes itself as a place of appropriation and recognition in which a democratic culture of conflict and mutual respect is lived. This includes a pronounced feedback culture, students’ involvement in various institutionalized participation structures and the systematic use of open forms of learning and working promoting students’ independence. It is a central concern of the school to design its community as a space for learning and social relations in the form of respectful and appreciative interaction, and to make students take responsibility for that. Hence, different lines of justification and goals of student participation are addressed: one aim is to improve the performance and skills of the students in terms of learning pedagogy; another goal is to develop the school and teaching. However, in the documents there is little concrete information how to implement this. Therefore, the formulated democratic goals and values serve more as a rhetorical establishment and an expectation structure than as concrete action plan.

Different concepts guiding student participation

The interviews reflect the structure of expectations formulated in the mission statement and relevant school documents, and no interviewee frankly questions the importance of student participation for better school and lesson design as well as for achieving learning goals as democratic competencies. The whole lot of students, teachers and parents see student participation as a need for equal consideration of the perspective of students. The SRs are considered the ‘mouthpiece’ for this goal and are responsible for collecting and channelling the different opinions of the students.

As a rule, however, different actors refer only to selected aspects of the comprehensive rhetorical establishment of the school’s claim to student participation, but rarely to the overall picture. First, some teachers and above all the headmaster justify the involvement of students in decision-making processes concerning school development by the fact, that schools are a ‘place’ for ‘children’ (Tm8, 6⁴). Although the need for pupils to participate in decision-making processes and school development is articulated, this participation is at the same time limited to participation that does not call into question the organizational goals of the school. ‘The school as an organization is a very complex entity, […] and everyone who is interested in the development of this school and involved in this development […] should be involved in decision-making processes […]’ (HMm10, 10).

A second guiding concept for student participation mostly formulated by teachers and parents is teaching democratic skills and political education. Teachers often define student participation as a goal for their professional actions, as a task assigned to them. ‘Therefore, I believe that the students, simply by being involved in such processes, that they could very well “learn” democracy in my opinion, co-determination is also very, very important, yes’ (Tm9, 6).

In contrast to teachers and parents, students and SRs have a more action-oriented approach to student participation. For them, the point of orientation for their own actions is to deal with the working relationships between students and individual teachers (Cw3, 39) as well as with social problems between students, such as disputes in the break. They thus determine the improvement of social relationships towards a respectful and appreciative school community as the main objective of student participation. While students regard their representatives as obliged to compensate for the teachers’ lack of attention in this area, the representatives themselves see their commitment more as a relief for the teachers (Sm5, 63; Sm6, 13). Teachers and parents consider that the competence of the students (representatives), who must express their concerns in a correct spatial-linguistic order, determines whether the teachers hear the students. ‘[The student representation] must be able to argue well in any case, he must be able to handle the schoolmates well, and he must maintain a good dialogue with the teachers’ (Pm7, 91).

For the first research question, it can be stated that the actors usually justify the participation of the students within the framework of the rights and abilities of their own group status, reflecting only individual aspects of the school’s democratic model. There seems to be no mutual awareness of the fact that actors formulate and accentuate different sub-concepts.

Different perceptions of the informal participation structures

Within the school improvement areas of school life, teaching and school organization (Eikel, 2007: 34) informal participation structures are evident above all in the form of involvement or having the opportunity to have a say. Students play an active role in the design of the school and their own class by taking part in school and class celebrations by organizing buffets and by painting the walls of their classrooms. Teachers identify this as far-reaching possibilities of involvement and substantiate it with the membership of the students. ‘Financial or actual spatial resources’ (Lm8, 34) only cause restrictions. In contrast, students address their commitment in the area of school design also with goals of well-being (Cf3, 49) and therefore better learning conditions. ‘If we e.g. now paint the class, I think it is just that some people volunteer and say, “Yes, the learning room is important to me, that I can just learn smartly for once”’ (Sm5, 29).

While students, teachers and the headmaster all perceive this creative freedom mostly positively, some parents see it also as a constraint which students find difficult to escape. In this perspective, they interpret school life as an area for acquiring and presenting competencies in ‘playing along’ (Alkemeyer and Rieger-Ladich, 2008: 110). ‘But no student can afford that he does not do anything, even if he does not want to. Because automatically he does. It cannot be’ (Pm2, 77–78).

However, there are isolated indications that not all students are involved within school life. While SRs attribute the lack of engagement sometimes to limited influence and disappointed participation experiences (Cf4, 41), teachers and some parents interpret non-participation more as a lack of competence due to the age or maturity of the students (Tf3, 95).

Different perceptions of social participation practice are also shown in the field of teaching. Teachers emphasize participation in this field by selecting and submitting suggestions (for excursion objectives, on presentation or lecture topics, etc.) and thus interpret co-speaking as far-reaching influence. An influence on the didactic and content design of teaching that goes beyond the selection of proposals (e.g. through informal negotiation processes) is only marginally mentioned.

If certain teaching topics are of great concern to the children, one can do more in this or that area, […] but the children have strengthened me in my endeavour to work even more intensively in this direction. So in that sense, of course, students have opportunities to influence the teaching. (Tm9, 46)

The teachers justify the participation spaces opened by them with their pedagogical task of promoting self-responsibility. At the same time, they instrumentalize the right to participate if the individual class is denied the right to have a say due to teaching disruptions.

Yes, [a cooperation between students and teachers] would be great, because then the teachers could simply work together again, […] and the lessons are more fun again. But there are the specialists [disturbing students] again, so we do not have that [speaking in the class]. (Sm5, 37)

Students interpret this withdrawal of participation as an unfair interruption of communication and weakness of the teacher to which they are powerless as single students (Sm5, 17–26). However, they are aware that they can try to influence the behaviour of the teachers through collective action. Students thus mark the shaping of collective interests as an important boundary between didactic action and co-determination (Sm3, 6–8).

Yes, we can talk to them and then the teachers will decide whether that is it, if it served any purpose or not. […] Therefore, when one person says it, it is usually not the case that only one comes to a teacher, but several. And then they will discuss it sometime. And then the teacher will say, ‘Yes, I’ll do it better.’ And yes. (Cf5, 107–111)

In the area of school organization, only marginal possibilities for influence are mentioned. Students can make suggestions, e.g. for the school library (SSPm7, 71) or the functionality of the building (repair suggestions). They are explicitly excluded from core topics of school organization, such as structuring the academic year (school-autonomous days, timetable), especially by teachers (Tf6, 33), who justify this restriction first with the lack of co-determination rights. This argument is used to reject student concerns in this area as ‘wishes’ that ‘overshoot the mark’ (Tm 8, 18). ‘Most of the time, I think, this are things that are simply not legally possible. […] Many things are, I think, are simply regulated by law and there are wishes that cannot be fulfilled’ (Tm7, 30, 55).

Second, teachers reject an influence on ‘fundamental decisions’ as impractical because of the ‘broad mass’ (Pf8, 124) of students and therefore conceive students as objects and homogeneous groups. Third, teachers argue with the lack of maturity of students due to their age. Students do not have the necessary competence and knowledge to make a ‘serious decision’ (HMmCV, 95). In doing so, teachers exclude at the same time a discursive questioning of these structuring framework conditions as well as institutional power relations (Clegg et al., 2006: 259).

Students or SRs themselves rarely mention the area of school organization as an area of co-determination. School principals and teachers, however, hardly realize that by withholding information, they influence which areas students could identify as possible areas of influence. ‘[…] and also alone by this non-utterance, that’s what I meant first with the information, if I never say anything to you, you cannot really demand it, because you may not even know that you can get it […]’ (Tw5, 149).

At the same time, the interests and goals of students and parents that are not in the interest of the school (e.g. parents and pupils may have other interests than teachers with regard to the distribution of school-autonomous days) are not discussed and limited participation of students within school organization becomes a non-negotiable fact. For example, the teachers’ conference decided about a demand of the students regarding learning objectives positively (HMm10, 52), while, with reference to legal framework conditions and a lack of resources (duty of supervision), an earlier opening of the school building for students was not even discussed (Tw2, 29). Due to the school’s claim to participation, SRs have the opportunity to seek further support partners in the event of denial or can raise their concerns again via other communication channels.

Well, they stand on their feet […] and when he [class spokesperson] is rejected, he simply goes to the next one and then he switches teachers, so to speak, who then help in a supportive way, also against other teachers. Whereby the “against” now is not so as […] that is just then, but in conversation, in discourse then […]. (Tf5, 37)

The headmaster in particular emphasizes his care for the learners as a responsible school principal (Risse, 2016: 231). Ultimately, it is he and the teachers who decide which of the issues to address. Due to the caring attitude of the headmaster, the school spokesperson sees his low influence, especially in the area of school organization, as unproblematic. Moreover, he does not express any ideas about how participation could go beyond co-design.

I do not see any big problems ahead of me right now. (Laughs) Well, I, with us are mostly students, they can vote just as well. Well, of course, it will be the director or the teachers, but the students can express their opinion for this and that and I think that is a good thing. I don’t see any problems. (SSPm7, 77)

In sum, despite the above-mentioned claim of the school to include students in the responsibility for the school, passive or limited intensities of participation in the form of cooperation and discussion dominate in the informal areas within school life, teaching and school organization. Moreover, students seem to be only successful, as long as their concerns match with the interests of the school as organization.

Different perceptions of semiformal and formal participation structures

In response to the students' marginal participation rights, the school implemented Social Learning Lessons (SOLE), feedback for teachers and a student parliament (SP) as semi-formal participation structures. Only teachers and the headmaster, but no students or parents, discussed the only formal body, the school forum as area for student participation in the interviews. Since it turned out that the parents were hardly informed about these semi-formal forms, the following results are mostly based on the interviews with teachers and students.

In the SOLE, students and teachers in each class have time once a week to deal with topics that are not directly related to lessons (Tm7, 59). The focus is on the social relations between students and suggestions for lesson design.

[…] there everyone can say his concerns, if he now has one, in front of the whole class and our teachers sometimes hand out notes to us so that we can anonymously write down what we want. Or what we think is good. Or make a suggestion, about what bothers me. (Sw1, 29)

Teachers usually justify SOLE pedagogically with the aim of learning conflict skills. The students, on the other hand, emphasize in an action-oriented way the handling and avoidance of conflicts, whereas the headmaster sees one of SOLE’s tasks as collecting topics for the students’ parliament (HMm10, 52) and thus as an instrument for school improvement. Only occasionally some parents and students point out that the introduction of their own concerns can also be accompanied by fear of negative consequences (e.g. fear of misunderstandings or new arguments). For them it is important that the class representatives make suggestions for lessons (Tw2, 12–13). ‘But I just guess, some [students] are just afraid when you say something wrong [in SOLE], because you, yeah, they are just afraid, and then you fight with others again’ (Sm5, 99).

Teachers see the collective feedback tool, which was implemented together with students and obligatory for all teachers, mainly as a productive way to think about their own teaching. This enables students to influence the teachers’ interpretation of what ‘good’ teaching is. A few teachers, however, delegitimize this influence by criticizing the feedback form itself or the students’ lack of competence.

Many things [items of feedback-questionnaire] are quite nice; many things don’t do me any good at all […]. Well, I did that, it was quite nice, I was very pleased, but I don’t really take it as hard cash, I have to say quite honestly. (Tm4, 109)

These teachers consider informal and individual feedback to be more effective and relevant for the further development of their professionalism (Tm4, 109; Tf5, 128–130; Tf6, 113). However, there is no discussion of the fact that direct informal feedback for students in stressful situations is associated with a high risk for themselves due to the hierarchical relationship (Bastian et al., 2016).

The greatest influence that SRs have is within the semi-formal SP. The headmaster implemented it due to a lack of legal co-determination structures. All SRs of the school meet once a month with the headmaster and discuss concerns of the students, who can thus indirectly make suggestions. In principle, all topics or areas that are relevant for the entire school or an individual class are covered. These may be ‘bigger things’ (Tm4, 82), such as performance assessment, social rules of conduct or school rules, but are mostly topics such as ensuring cleanliness in the classes or necessary repairs. At least students can question the behaviour of individual teachers or change the rules (wearing slippers, chewing gum in class) by the SP.

The headmaster takes care of the further processing, whereby the selection is ‘strongly bound to the assessments and actions of the headmaster’ (Gamsjäger, Langer and Altrichter, 2013: 155). If they are successful, the school headmaster’s admonition forces teachers at least to legitimize their behaviour (see in more detail Gamsjäger et al., 2013, 2017).

Or, as far as I know, the principal is always present at the student parliament. And then he informs, sometimes we have received mails, he has made us aware of some things which need to be changed or which are not carried out, but which are in the school rules, are in the agreements. So, the director is already behind the fact that what the class spokespersons agree on in this committee is also being implemented. (Tm7, 28)

As with the collective feedback, teachers can only resist by delegitimizing or criticizing the SP (e.g. lack of transparency, Tm9, 44) or by question the relevance of the concerns expressed by the learners. Nevertheless, they cannot challenge the SP itself or the normative participation demand.

[…] the student representatives have so much say in my feelings anyway that we in the teaching staff would rather say that we would also be happy if they talk to us and skip one stage. [Which stage to skip?] In such a way that it is immediately, i.e. that it comes into the student parliament and is delegated there again to us passed on. And we practically always get it second hand. I mean things where I say: “Okay, we could have done that in direct conversation too.” (Tw3, 40)

The school forum is in Austria a formal body for teachers and parents, where students have no legal right of co-determination. In the past, the headmaster has invited SR. Since the SR did not attend regularly, the headmaster interpreted a participation in the evening as too ‘stressful’ and the content as ‘not very interesting’ (HMm10, 25) for students and refrained from inviting them ever since. Other reasons for absence, such as lack of co-determination rights, criticism of the structure or implementation modes of the committee, i.e. the form of the event, the preparation of the content or the temporal or spatial implementation are not addressed. No ideas are expressed as to whether and how students could influence a formal body despite a lack of voting rights (e.g. via ‘lobbying’ with parents entitled to vote). Students or SR did not mention the school forum and remain excluded from influence on contents such as long-term planning, budget expenditures, school-autonomous days, textbooks, etc.

In sum, a large number of teachers accept the semi-formal participation structures and adjust their behaviour. At single points student could navigate power relations because of the establishment of semi-formal structures. According to the results of Fleming (2015) as well as Mager and Nowak (2012), the potential of students’ self-determined influence on decision-making processes remains unused.

Summary

The description of the guiding orientations and concepts showed that the school’s claim for student participation is expressed as a normative, cross-sectional and longitudinal school development task (Beutel, 2016). Superficially, the school follows its stated objectives. However, the triangulation of the perspectives of parents, students and teachers already revealed oscillating objectives and different lines of justification. More importantly, the executed student participation did not meet the school’s normative claim. It enforced the school’s organizational identity, not the self-determined influence of students.

In the informal sphere, participation was usually granted in form of involvement in school life and of having a say in the classroom. While teachers presented this verbosely as far-reaching, students did not understand it as a means of collective co-determination. Concerning school organization, students could only make suggestions, but their influence on core issues of school organization was decidedly excluded. Semi-formal structures allowed more influence than informal structure. The students however still had to renegotiate regulations and their implementation due to a lack of rights. From this, it follows that, as a prerequisite, students had to know the unwritten laws of recognition and implementation (Arnot and Reay, 2007: 322). However, in the end, teachers and the headmaster decided whether a concern was dealt with or not. This basic dependency on teachers and the headmaster did not allow students to enforce concerns that contradict teachers’ or school management’s aims and interests. Students can pursue their interests successfully only when their concerns match the school’s interests.

At least partly, this can be explained by a tension between school stabilization and representation of interests. The organizational need for stabilization tends to coerce forced participation by mere presence (Lingkost and Meister, 2001: 151) in formal and semi-formal decision-making processes. Superficially, students may seem to participate, but rarely do they have a real say or a momentous negotiation. Co-determination and decision-making rights hardly took place, particularly not with regard to school organization (cf. the classification of participation criteria by Eikel, 2007: 16). All in all, we can speak of a tendency that ‘covert expressions of power still lead to regulation, social control and restriction rather than emancipation, democracy and freedom’ (Wood et al., 2018: 183).

There was very little evidence that school actors are aware of these limitations. Besides non-participation (Budde, 2010), no resistance to limited forms participation emerged in the interviews. Correspondingly, no discussions about the limitations of student participation occurred. Instead, a traditional thinking of a hierarchical teacher–student relationship and a missing will to share power of decisions could be observed.

Discussion and limitations

Of course, we have presented results derived from only one case. But if further research would show that these results can be more or less generalized – which can be reasonably presumed, if we take into account our research experiences in Austria – there are two conclusions to be drawn with respect to democratic school development and democratic education.

(1) If student participation is defined as a core element of school development, it has to be detached from dependence on individual good will, and turned into collective negotiation instead. There is a need (a) for semi-formal structures that underwrite forms of student participation, which cause teachers to (at least) regularly listen to students and justify their own actions, (b) informal practices students can use to (re-)introduce concerns into a negotiation process with stalwart consequences. If schools commit to this, the hegemonic position of teachers with regard to participation would at least partially be called into question (Wood et al., 2018: 192). Student participation would become some more of an education for democracy. In contrast, the intention of stabilizing the school organization by participation can be regarded at least partially as fulfilled.

(2) Schools may appreciate that this kind of stabilization prevents the school’s practices and structures from being called into question, let alone from arising resistance or disorder. The students’ complete lack of decision-making power, however, depoliticizes their participation practice (Hedtke, 2016: 135). The practice of shaping the goals of the school by a highly limited and conformism producing sort of student participation makes it impossible to exercise typical patterns of political action for teachers and students (Hedtke, 2016; Langer, 2010). Whereupon, due to different participation rights and the hierarchical structure of school, teachers can delegitimize or instrumentalize students’ participation or arbitrarily reject their concerns by pointing out the lack of rights. Students can only withdraw their commitment (Budde, 2010).

This drastic inequality in participation is hidden and justified by teachers’ counterfactual belief in equal consideration of the perspectives of all groups. Teachers do not attribute student withdrawal to a fear of negative consequences or to disappointing participation experiences, but rather to a lack of ability or knowledge and thus a lack of coping with the required practice of participation. Seen in this way, the Austrian model of democratic learning seems to result in mere symbolic participation and the question must be asked if this practice of participation conformism may let student lose faith in democratic procedures, or even teaches them conformism and authority following rather than democratic participation. Democracy as a very template can yield uncomfortable outcomes with respect to political attitudes and democratic societies. To enable effective student participation, it is necessary to transfer suitable power and knowledge to students (Hedtke, 2016: 134). With high priority, the students must be given suitable knowledge and information in advance, so they can ultimately influence decision-making processes.

Consequently, it should be explored if the apparent compatibility of the students’ interests and the school’s goals derives from manipulative management strategies and conceals some interests of the actors in charge (Bragg, 2007: 344). This would require an in-depth examination of the power constructions in the discourse of participation (Taylor and Robinson, 2009) in order to examine how the rhetoric of participation simultaneously conceals and enforces inequality. At least, in order to improve the hypotheses indicated by this case study, comparative and more detailed case studies including schools without a claim for student participation, and upper secondary schools would be necessary, particularly because age served as a main criterion for the restriction (Coffey and Lavery, 2018). At last, as similar problems and contradictions can be found in the discussions about the influence of student participation on class and school climate (Simmons et al., 2015), learning outcomes (Wenzel, 2001) or matters such as resilience (Lutz, 2016), health and well-being (Anderson and Graham, 2015; John-Akinola and Nic-Gabhainn, 2014), it would be fruitful to link these different research strands.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was supported by Sparkling Science, a funding program of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.

Notes

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