Student Views on Classroom Representative Meetings in the Preparatory Program of a Turkish University

• Main Author: Duygu Özbilen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Uludag University 2015-04-01
• Series: Journal of Teacher Education and Educators
• Subjects: democracy; equality; freedom; student views; democratic university environment
• Online Access: http://jtee.org/document/issue6/MAKALE%205.pdf

The present study intends to focus on the concept of “student voice” in higher education. Since democracy necessitates freedom and contribution, it cannot be underestimated that democracy can be maintained by the involvement of students in administration. The research conducted aims to shed a light onto the university students’ perception of “student voice” in university administration. Within this framework, classroom representatives of preparatory school elementary level students of a foundation university in Istanbul were analyzed. The data of the study were collected by focus group interviews and analyzed by content analysis using the qualitative analysis software Nvivo 10. According to the results, the classroom representatives consider themselves important and assume that their ideas are being valued. However, there are still some concerns about the future decisions of the administration in that some of their ideas might not be taken into account. They assume that the class representative meetings should be held more frequently to enable a more democratic university environment. The results of this study will be the basis for a larger scale study that includes the perception of more classroom representatives from different levels. In further studies the leadership style of the administrators will also be studied to find out the rationale behind the students’ attitudes towards the concept of student participation at the administration level.