Critical Voice Challenges in 7-12 Upper School

In Upper School surveys the data conversion process aggregates the 21 qualities into four groups, Climate for Inclusivity, Educational Process, Personal Experience, and Critical Voice. When we look at the results for all schools in the database, Educational Process generates the highest scores while Critical Voice is consistently the lowest. Post survey analyses by school administrators almost always highlight deficiencies with one or more elements of Critical Voice and thus, it is worthwhile to identify the most prevalent challenges.

The Critical Voice aggregation consists of four qualities, Voice Inside and Outside Class, Critical Consciousness and Conversations Across Differences.  The Inclusivity Index uses the following positive and negative statements in the survey to assess these four qualities.

The following summary shows how we pair the four qualities, linking Voice Inside with Outside Class and Critical Consciousness with Conversations Across Differences. This graphic arrays one of the pairs, Critical Consciousness with Conversations Across Differences analysis. The dispaly illustrates the four-quadrant plot which focuses on the percentages of students that fall into each quadrant.

Note: the analysis chooses to deem 0’s (zeroes) as neutral and group these students with the positive score set. This respects the Inclusivity Index structure and the possibility that zero scores result from students avioding choices about that quality.

For example, on the Critical Consciousness and Conversations Across Differences plot, 48% of the students score both qualities either neutral or postive (not explicitly negative) and 16% score both negative. A segment of interest is the 20% of students that score Critical Consciousness either positive or neutral and yet Conversations Across Differences as a negative.

The results of both pairings are displayed in eight circles below with the circles arranged from left to right based on biggest challenges (red) to the greatest strengths (green).  The circles on the left represent the most troubling segment for each pair and as you move progessively to the right, the plot displays the size of the most supportive Critical Voice realities at the schools. This analysis identifies that around 15 to 20% of students typically score all four Critical Voice elements in a negative manner. Additionally, there are at least some Critical Voice concerns with the additional 20 to 25%. The details show us that as a generalization, students tend to feel comfortable with Critical Consciousness but not Conversations Across Differences.

How can a school deal with roughly 50 to 60% of their students that report at least some deficiency in the Critical Voice category?

How can the school use the knowledge gained from sharing inside the classroom to close the gap between students’ willingness to express themselves outside of class?

Even though many students feel comfortable challenging their ideas, how can the school help students translate this to dealing with differences through dialogue?