Student voice in Professional Learning Communities: The question of student agency

Actively involving students in improving education can positively impact its quality and student agency. This can be achieved when students voice their opinions, collaborate with adults, and/or take leadership roles (student voice), for example in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). However, little is known about how students can be involved in school improvement through PLCs. We therefore qualitatively explored in what ways students were involved in the work of seven PLCs. In addition, we zoomed in on the case of one PLC in which students participated together with teachers as PLC members. Using social network analysis supplemented with qualitative data, we explored the positions and roles of these students. We concluded that students were only involved to a limited extent in most PLCs: mainly as passive data sources and sometimes as active respondents. Even when students were involved as PLC members, they initially seemed to have only limited agency. On the other hand, students can play an important key role in making connections between education professionals in the PLC and the student population outside.