Measuring Student Voice Practices: Development and Validation of School and Classroom Scales

Educational leaders and teachers are increasingly embracing the concept of student voice and implementing student voice practices (SVPs) in schools and classrooms. This study presents the validation of two SVPs scales that together reflect the state of SVPs in a school. One 17-item scale focuses on teachers’ SVPs, and the other 11-item scale addresses school-level SVPs. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses using a randomly divided sample of 1,751 students from four schools revealed both scales to be multidimensional, consistent with theory. Each scale also showed strong reliability, convergent validity with student-teacher relationships, and concurrent validity with academic engagement. Measurement invariance testing demonstrated that the scales are invariant by gender and racial and ethnic background. The SVPs scales can advance research on student voice in schools by helping to clarify the enabling conditions and the effects of practices that give students a say in improving their educational experiences.