What is a Democratic Classroom?
Democratic classrooms centre on student voice, agency and involvement in class-based decision making.
The development of democratic processes with students in the classroom fosters (Council of Europe,2023):
- Diversity and empathy
- Co-operation and participation
- Knowledge of human rights and equity
- Knowledge of what makes a process democratic and why this is important
- Self-knowledge and reflection on actions which support democratic approaches
In this section, principles of Democratic Classrooms are introduced. Self-guided resources are:
- Learning approach: how learning takes place in Democratic Classrooms, and the role of teacher and student in the classroom process.
- Video: Transforming Schools into Democratic Communities. In this short TEDx-Talk video, Ramin Farhangi describes how students co-operate and collaborate in a democratic school (Tedx Talks, 2016)
- Explore further: Additional resource links to support Democratic Classrooms.
Quick Links for Democratic Classrooms
Learning approach: A democratic classroom is characterised by students having high trust and shared power with teachers. Within the classroom, students have high agency, voice and are involved in decision making, with students’ ideas requested, respected, and acted upon. In the UK secondary school setting, democratic classrooms typically are school level approaches centred on the form or tutor group setting, with those principles then applied across different subjects and teachers (Edutopia,2021).
Video: Transforming Schools into Democratic Communities. In this short TEDx-Talk video, Ramin Farhangi describes how students co-operate and collaborate in a democratic school (TEDx Talks, 2016).
How learning takes place: Teachers plan activities to ensure that diverse perspectives shared by students are reflected on and considered. This includes engaging with challenging social issues. Strategies employed by teachers to achieve this include group discussion, dialogue and decision making underpinned by protocols and rubrics. Democratic classroom strategies aim to develop the student as an individual, who is confident to share their ideas, are empathetic and can walk in the shoes of others, and who can critically explore challenging topics, and suggest steps to enact solutions in the classroom community (Edutopia,2021).
Explore Further: Ideas to Support the Democratic Classroom
Developing a Democratic Classroom
The following are strategies which develop a democratic classroom (UNICEF,2018; Edutopia,2021):
Classroom arrangement: Teachers develop the classroom as a safe and productive space for dialogue and discussion, including seating plans which promote peer to peer interactions rather than the traditional class facing, whiteboard-teacher-as-authority focus. This allows students to more easily to work collaboratively and transforms the teacher from a mediator to a facilitator of discussion. Protocols support students to build collaborative and independent group work strategies, and communication and negotiation skills.
Class Charters: students create class charters of the learning environment they want to see, rather than sets of rules to enforce classroom behaviours. Charters emphasise rights of students, but also their responsibilities to their learning community. Negotiation of class charters gives students ownership of their learning space, and shared values of learning as a classroom community. Charters state the steps if a student expresses discriminatory language or ideas1. They include conflict resolution, and how the classroom will be a ‘peaceful place.’
Group work-strategies for discussion, dialogue, collaboration: teachers actively plan how students collaborative working, communication and problem-solving strategies will build through protocols to support the development of group work. Building these skills for young people requires curriculum time and teacher planning of activities.
Cautions of Democratic Classrooms
Students need curriculum time to develop group collaborative learning strategies. Democratic classroom strategies, and specific approaches, for example Class Charters, need to sit within whole school approaches to behaviour, and the development of soft skills to ensure that students do not perceive or be subject to conflicting guidelines, with progression seen by age group.
Teachers need to build their confidence in managing dialogic forms of learning in the classroom, including scaffolding and appropriate support for students to develop as independent learners. Sufficient teacher planning time needs to be allocated to the development of collaborative work (see collaborative /group learning strategies).
Teachers need to be honest about any limitations on the delegation of decision making to students in the democratic classroom, and what domains remain subject to whole school protocols UNICEF,2018; Edutopia,2021).
Bibliography and additional resources
- Council of Europe. (2023). * TASKs for Democracy - 60 activities to learn and assess transversal attitudes, skills and knowledge. Available from: https://www.coe.int/en/web/learning-resources/-/tasks-for-democracy
- Edutopia. (2021). The power of a democratic classroom. https://www.edutopia.org/article/power-democratic-classroom/
- Government South Australia. (2023). TfEL framework guide chapter 2.1: develop democratic relations. Available from: https://www.education.sa.gov.au/docs/curriculum/tfel/tfel_framework_guide_2.1_develop_democratic_relationship.pdf
- Leach. (2018). Democracy in the classroom. Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1757743818756911
- Tedx Talks. (2016). Transforming Schools into Democratic Communities. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6wlTtQBlhI
- UNICEF. (2018). A complete guide to creating charters. Available from: https://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/08/A-compleate-guide-to-creating-charters.pdf
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