Student Voice Reimagines Professional Development

How do we understand what students think about school? How can we tell which programs are successful and which ones need improvement? What is the overall atmosphere and culture of a school building?

Traditionally, these questions have been answered through lengthy surveys, limited focus groups, or by relying solely on adult opinions.

Our new empathy interview process offers a transformative solution. It reimagines how schools can engage young people in dialogue to gain a complete understanding of their experiences and perspectives.

In short, the redesigned K-college HRP empathy interview process involves students hosting peer conversations to uncover key themes that reveal the assets and challenges within schools and districts. By gathering rich culture and climate data, we provide in-depth analysis that schools can use for district initiatives or extended partnerships in workshops, grants, and more, ultimately aiming to scale impact and drive meaningful change. We can now support hundreds to thousands of young people at a school or district to share their experiences, challenges, and ideas with us – allowing schools and districts to listen and learn from a massive dataset.

This shift not only enhances strategic planning but also encourages innovative thinking, with students playing a crucial role in reimagining the future of education. It’s also unlike any culture, climate, or school survey data that has existed before.

This model follows a three step process:

• Listen: We train student facilitators to conduct empathy interviews and focus groups with their peers, gathering insights on what students love about school and what they wish to improve, all tailored to address the specific questions and interests of schools & districts.
• Analyze: We utilize cutting-edge conversation sense-making technology, qualitative data mapping software, and AI tools to code, theme, and analyze hundreds of student conversations, presenting key themes, student quotes, and areas of success and growth in a comprehensive school portal.
• Act: Schools receive tailored recommendations, including research-backed strategies, actionable steps with varying levels of effort, and connections to additional partners to address key concerns. HRP supports districts with case studies, grant applications, and ongoing professional development to ensure successful implementation.

This work is made possible through HRP’s experience in partnership and student voice work with districts around the country, as well as the sense-making and transcription technology through our partner, Cortico.  Cortico’s Fora technology allows us to quickly analyze key themes and highlights of conversations, as well as enable students to easily host these conversations and tell us what stood out the most to them.

Use cases could include:

• Analyzing a school’s progress and alignment with their state’s Portrait of a Graduate, offering recommendations to transform classroom instruction.
• Recognizing the impact of specific policy or schedule changes on student learning and engagement at school.
• Identifying the core assets and challenges that a specific school is facing from a students’ lens.
• Seeing the need for additional training, curriculum updates, and/or pedagogical shifts based on the well-being and motivation of young people.

This evolution in our PD process aligns with HRP's core mission to enact change by listening and fostering genuine connections. By positioning students as leaders in focus groups, we not only validate their experiences but also create opportunities for them to develop essential leadership skills. Through this process, students learn to advocate for themselves and their peers, gaining a sense of agency and ownership over their learning journey.

As we continue to evolve our professional development initiatives, HRP remains committed to placing students at the forefront of educational change. This is aligned with our commitments to the PD process:

• Strong Partnerships: We value close connections and treat educators as experts, helping districts develop closer connections with young people and their communities to collaboratively determine the best steps forward, rather than prescribing solutions.
• Equity-Driven Practice: We are dedicated to using representative demographic data in our studies and providing recommendations that benefit all learners, including those at the margins, as we believe that designing for students at the margins leads to gains for everyone.
• Rigid Data Policy: We are committed to ensuring that young peoples' information are securely stored, processed, and analyzed with care, using a consent-driven conversation model that anonymizes student data, supports voice anonymization, and aligns with district data privacy policies.

In addition, HRP will continue its longstanding professional learning services centered on design thinking (interdisciplinary project-based learning), alternative assessment (ungrading and portfolios), and critical digital literacy (AI, digital media, and the like).

Our goal is to inspire schools to embrace this student-centered model, recognizing the transformative potential of student voice in shaping the future of education. In partnership, we can create learning environments that prioritize human connection, empathy, and collaboration, ultimately leading to a more equitable and empowering educational experience for all. Let’s restore humanity, together!

Example Step-by-Step:

1. HRP partners with a school or district to learn about the concept and challenge they’re looking to learn more about. We co-create questions that will be hosted in student empathy interviews (focus groups).
2. We schedule dates to train a small group of students (e.g. 10) to host empathy interviews. In addition, we brainstorm additional questions from the student perspective to add to our question set.
3. Each group of students hosts and records 2-4 conversations with ~6-8 peers, then leads a reflective sensemaking session to determine what stood out most to young people in each conversation. (10 students leading 4 conversations with 8 peers would capture 320 student perspectives!)
4. HRP analyzes this information using its own qualitative research metrics, AI, and toolkits offered by Fora.
5. HRP prepares a formal report that’s presented to teachers, administrators, or the community, with recommendations for further support and/or next steps.

If you’d like to listen and learn from hundreds of young people at your school or institution, reach out to us and let’s make it happen – or click here to learn more!