Co-Designing in Action: Purpose, Projects and Feedback as Foundations for Student Voice
As a high school English and History teacher, I tried hard to find ways for students' own voices to be heard in the teaching and learning process. However, the institutional nature of curriculum and assessment often meant that inviting students' voices into negotiating the curriculum (as Garth Boomer would call it) was tokenistic or often pre-determined. In what follows, I share reflections on practice that invites students into the learning from my experience teaching in secondary schools and university, as well as my own tutoring business that experimented with my own project-based learning model driven by student interests of concern or curiosity.
Boomer’s (1992) Model B of Negotiated Curriculum – Boomer was ahead of his time, but this model is pre-internet, which radically challenges its stages and relationship.
Projects of Student Interests
Three years into my teaching career I wanted to trial some theories I had about designing learning around students' interests. This was inspired by teaching many disengaged students who saw no relevance in much of the curriculum content, but whose motivation changed completely in the few instances I was able to bring their interests into the classroom learning. Sadly, the experiences of boredom and an irrelevant curriculum are not uncommon but often overlooked in the literature, as this disengagement is routinely left to ‘alternative’ school settings to deal with – see te Riele’s work (2011, 2012).
It was the last six weeks of Term 4 – a time when all extrinsic pressures and motivators were largely gone. Students knew they had no more 'official' assessments and that their reports were already written up to be sent home soon. It's common for teachers to use this time to either prepare students for the next year of their discipline or revisit topics that they felt students could improve on. For myself, this was an opportune time to explore the impact of putting the purpose of the learning in the hands of the students.
I had three year 9 classes and set everyone the following project task, which had very loose parameters:
You are to come up with a question of your own that will take some weeks to research the answer to. - An opportunity to develop students' questioning skills (largely overlooked in the curriculum).
Your response must be a minimum of 500 words or equivalent to this. - A chance to push for more depth or 'academic rigour' so often criticised in interest-based learning.
You can choose which medium you present your findings in – it can be a PowerPoint presentation, a report, a speech or whatever seems appropriate for that depth. - Flexible enough to develop students’ communication skills while giving them the chance to bring unique talents into the learning if they have different ways to communicate beyond an essay.
You must have a bibliography and rely on a minimum of three sources of information. - An opportunity to encourage wider source analysis, reading and more critical thinking of online information.
Students negotiated their questions with me in a low-pressure, conversational way:
”Tell me your question and I'll tell you if it sounds deep enough to not find the first answer on Google."
It did not take long, and students were jumping around from topics on true crime/cold case stories, their favourite bands and issues they worried about. To this day, I still remember a student who had not submitted one official assessment task on time all year (or if he had, the effort he put into it was so low as to get extremely low marks or N-Warnings) say to me:
"Do you know the band Tool sir? Could I write about their new album coming out? There's been talk for a while that they're going to release one and it's not really clear."
It sounded like a topic that would require several sources and wasn't a 'straight answer', so I said,
"Of course, so long as you have a minimum of three sources; make sure to keep them so you can put them in your bibliography."
"Are you serious?!"
In response, "sure, why not?"
This seemingly innocuous interaction over a task that would unlikely be able to be marked and certainly was too late to report on, was the most enthusiasm I had seen from this student in the entire year. He was not the only one. More importantly, every lesson in that final six weeks, all of my students came in excited and double checking:
"Are we working on our project today sir?!"
“Of course we are. You're working on it until you finish it. If you finish it early you can show me and I can give you feedback for editing, but if it doesn't need any, you're welcome to start another if you like.”
My memory is hazy, but even still, those were my expectations, and I thought the students would be enthused. I didn't expect how universal it would be. Every student came in excited to learn up until the end of the year – a time when most students are restlessly wanting to watch movies and can't wait for the holidays. I didn't need to pressure, remind or micromanage them. They came in and started straight away. Even that boy who all year submitted little work or very low effort work, always late. I'd imagine in that six week he did the most reading and writing he had done all year across the classroom.
Putting the Purpose of the Learning Upfront
The next year I trialled my own interest-based tutoring with a small group of students. I wanted to put my money where my mouth was and explore my own version of ‘project-based learning,’ especially having been at a school that implemented this with a Humanities and STEM model. I felt like the terms ‘project-based learning’ (PBL), ‘inquiry-based learning’ and ‘problem-based learning’ routinely became intertwined, confused and therefore poorly structured. Even worse, common practice at the time (and as far as I'm aware, still is today) was to start off PBL with a 'Hook Event' (Kaechele, 2020). This always felt grossly misleading to me. It reduced much of the teaching to a 'pitching' or 'selling' of the purpose of the learning. Instead of allowing students to choose what to learn so the purpose was in their hands, it felt like a manipulative attempt to convince students that their learning was important – even if they had zero say in it. Instead of addressing the root of the problem in curriculum design, it attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of the students who, within a few lessons, will be back to largely learning as usual (or worse, a teachers attempts to impose their own passion project onto the students).
The way I saw it, project-based learning was a great framework for designing teaching and learning, especially since going into adulthood, realistically every job is 'project management'. Whether in construction or law, we all manage various projects with degrees of complexity, collaboration and checkpoints for a final deadline.
What drove the projects for the students? Their proposal:
Curiosity (their inquiry); OR
Concern (their problem)
For the students, this meant the purpose of the learning wasn't a mystery and it wasn't dictated by some higher authority. I also came up with this model to try and mirror the purpose of learning in humanity; reducing it down to really what are often the two separate (sometimes overlapping) reasons for why we learn – out of curiosity for something interesting to us, or out of concern for a problem we need to solve. Within these project cycles were different stages, but below are just some of the examples of the questions my students came up with in the pre-assessment/diagnostic session:
Is religion compulsory around the world? (Year 8 boy)
What and who are psychopaths and narcissists? (Year 8 boy)
Does the radiation from technology actually cause cancer? (Year 10 girl)
What is the importance of nutrition and physical activity? (Year 10 girl)
Is our overall mental health worse than in the past? (Year 10 girl)
How does religion and culture affect people's views on human rights? (Year 10 girl)
I highlight these examples to show the maturity of the questions students wanted to answer. They only had five minutes to come up with these questions before a total of 60 minutes for researching and writing their responses. However, it reveals the concerns and curiosities young people have that curriculum may not cover, but certainly could. This highlights how creating space or mandating time in the curriculum for students to explore these curiosities and concerns can be both responsive and empowering. It also demonstrates the thoughtful questions students want to ask but are rarely allowed to ask. Even among teachers and education academics in my time, I have routinely had my ideas dismissed for fear that ‘students don’t know what they want’ or the misplaced assumption that students don’t ask deep questions.
Re-Considering the Purpose of Schooling – Student Identities and Aspirations
These questions also reflect two of the other important functions of schools:
a) To help students understand themselves – such as their interests and passions.
b) And in turn, to help them consider future career pathways based on these interests or the skills they get to practise in the process of exploring them.
This latter point highlights an often-hidden problem we rarely discuss in education – the university drop out rates and lack of clarity students have when leaving high school. I have spoken to many students, as well as heard from colleagues in schools and university tutors who know many young people that choose a degree because ‘that’s what you’re supposed to do’, ‘my parents expected me to’ or ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’ The ‘quarter life’ crisis is fuel for many memes and conversations among young people, but these norms hide a huge cost on young people emotionally and especially financially given the cost of degrees.
Within my project cycles I embedded critical thinking and information technology skills that I have never seen in the NSW syllabus, in any school I've taught in nor in parts of university education. This often involved exploring cognitive biases or skills that students may only learn through efforts to connect them to teacher-librarians (such as the use of Boolean operators and source reliability analysis). While I was trying to empower students with knowledge to help them be more independent in their thinking and less susceptible to influence, these skills were universal to learning across disciplines and into adulthood.
However, as I expected in trialling this model, ‘schooling’ inevitably got in the way. Whether NAPLAN or assessment tasks, parents were quick to pause the students' projects and ask me to work on supporting them in these 'official' tests. Despite students really enjoying the projects, it was a frustrating reality that I expected in 2019, might simply be 'too progressive' or 'too alternative' to really take off with parents (particularly as someone in close proximity to a selective school).
I have yet to see a model like my own created in this student-led fashion, outside of small programs in passing – and is why my PhD is pursuing a comparative case study to find if schools are doing this at a wider level. In NSW, the high stakes nature of the HSC and NAPLAN make co-design far less possible for fear of poor school results. Despite this, the underlying skills embedded in the project cycles were certainly used in almost all summative assessments seen across KLAs – such as questioning, researching and synthesising skills. From some of my own reflections, part of the problem we see is this simplistic binary between ‘progressive education’ (student-led, project, inquiry, discovery and problem-based learning) and ‘traditional education’ (teacher-led, exams, explicit teaching, rote learning). There are lots of ironically hard skills – often coined ‘soft skills’ - that do take scaffolding, explicit teaching and more teacher-led learning to support this progressive learning design, such as students’ ability to focus, self-reflect, monitor and manage their time, as well as plan, read, research and write. The work of my colleagues at 4Cs Transformative Learning and the learning disposition wheel demonstrates one way to consider the intertwining of these ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills for teachers and learners.
Diagram – Coherence Maker. Source: (The Learning Disposition Wheel — 4CTL, n.d.).
This tension between ‘progressive’ and ‘traditional’ was evident in the model I witnessed at my first school. Their STEM and Humanities, integrated project-based learning, arguably went ‘too progressive’ with open-planned classrooms, 80 students to 3 teachers and almost entirely group-based learning. Many of the students did not have the emotional self-regulation, social skills and literacy strengths so critical to succeeding in this environment. Inevitably, as the students NAPLAN results got worse and staff struggled to manage behaviour, as leadership left, the model fell over entirely. The school’s reputation plummeted in the local community, creating a negative feedback loop of lower student enrolments and a higher ratio of students from disadvantaged backgrounds with more challenging social, emotional and learning needs. To make matters worse, by association these models become ‘the baby thrown out with the bathwater’ and we succumb to another cycle of media and policy critiques of ‘woke’ or ‘discovery learning’ reinforcing this simplistic, unhelpful binary that ignores the necessary blending of these pedagogical approaches.
Perhaps something about whether this method of teaching has been replicated by other educators could be useful? If it hasn’t, it could be worthwhile elucidating some of the difficulties and how/why they should/can be overcome. E.g. Has it just not been considered by other educators, do schools look down on it as a framework, etc.
Feedback as Dialogue
Since teaching, I have always made the practice of keeping an open feedback form in Google for students. I'd routinely remind them that it was there, that it could be anonymous if they want and that I want to improve my teaching to better meet their needs. This practice I've followed into University teaching of pre-service teachers. For instance, early in my teaching online, a student's feedback asked for more use of breakout rooms, which was an easy change that students were greatly appreciative of.
Routinely, I've given students the chance to share their concerns about their teacher education, what topics stress them out most, which resources they would like more of and collaboratively problem-solve or share my own experiences to better meet them where their needs are. At University, this can often be easier given the curriculum can be more open and trust is given to tutors that in schools was not always there. Feedback spaces (such as online) and time given (such as activities designed in the classroom) have not only proven to be critical for learning – there is a wealth of evidence about how fundamental feedback is to learning – but create dialogue as the norm. Instead of dictation based on presumed skills or knowledge we think students should have, we create a culture of collaborative problem-solving as students share concerns or curiosities that a more experienced individual can support or provide direction for filling.
Key Practice Takeaways
Co-designing learning and empowering student voice is far less of a mystery than education systems would have us think. When policy and ego step aside in our spaces, we can create habits of practice that flatten the hierarchy in classrooms and build learning as a partnership between students, teachers and the internet. So, where possible, try to develop the following habits to normalise a dialogue of shared learning:
Make Feedback the Norm: Cultivate a classroom culture where sharing feedback is expected and valued. Use open surveys, giving students the option to share their thoughts anonymously or openly.
Keep Feedback Visible and Actionable: Regularly remind students about feedback opportunities, provide dedicated time for them to respond, and make sure to check their input consistently.
Show You're Listening: Take action based on the feedback you receive. Even when it's challenging, share constructive criticism openly and without judgment. Clearly communicate how student feedback is influencing your teaching practices.
Empower Student-Led Learning: Create opportunities for students to take ownership of their learning. This could involve dedicated class time for collaborative brainstorming, using post-it notes to voice concerns, or forming student-led support groups. Act as a guide, empowering students to drive problem-solving based on their shared needs.
Offer Meaningful Choices: Where it's not possible to give complete control over the learning, provide students with choices in how they explore their interests and address their concerns. You can also offer options in how they demonstrate their understanding.
Balance Choice with Structure: Be mindful that too many choices can be overwhelming. Presenting a few well-defined options alongside an invitation for students to suggest alternatives can strike the right balance, preventing "choice paralysis."
References
Boomer, G. (1992). Negotiating the Curriculum. In G. Boomer, C. Onore, N. Lester, & J. Cook (Eds.), Negotiating the Curriculum: Educating for the 21st Century (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203975381
Kaechele, M. (2020, December 1). 7 PBL entry events for remote learning. PBLWorks. Retrieved April 30, 2025, from https://www.pblworks.org/blog/7-pbl-entry-events-remote-learning
te Riele, K. (2011) Raising educational attainment: how young people's experiences speak back to the Compact with young Australians. Critical Studies in Education, 52(1), 93-107, DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2011.536515
te Riele, K. (2012) Challenging the logic behind government policies for school completion. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 44(3), 237-252, DOI: 10.1080/00220620.2012.683394
The Learning Disposition Wheel — 4CTL. (n.d.). 4CTL. https://www.4ctransformativelearning.org/the-learning-disposition-wheel
