Decision-making conditions for participatory student voice research at scale: examples from studying vertical school spaces

Student voice research recognises students’ roles as knowledge makers in cultural institutions like schools. It rarely occurs at scale, as researchers need to work closely with small groups of students to enable dialogue, listen, and negotiate. Gathering rich qualitative data from large groups of students in schools using such participatory methods can be challenging, becoming methodologically “messy” for philosophical and practical reasons. This paper links high-level research principles and pragmatics of on-the-ground research strategy and improvisation to provide ways of managing the ‘mess’ of student voice research at scale. Drawing from researcher experiences working with large groups of students, a reflexive decision-making theory is used to discern the deliberations that guided the research team’s decision-making. Six different dimensions are illustrated, alongside methodological questions to offer guidance to other researchers. Student voice research at scale offers opportunities for diverse participatory roles for students and researchers to be innovative, reflexive knowledge makers.