Democracy learning as failing template for establishing student participation for school improvement: A participatory case study within a secondary school

Participation of students is defined as a conditional factor for the acquisition of democracy learning and is increasingly taken into account in Austrian schools. Nevertheless, in contrast to other countries, little research has been conducted in Austria about if or how democracy learning provides a template for the social practice of student participation within school improvements. The current qualitative case study sought to investigate, explanatively from the perspective of school actors, how a secondary school tries to implement a self-imposed demand for more student participation in school improvement by using aspects of democracy learning as template. Qualitative guideline-based interviews using a participative research method were conducted and the data were analysed by means of content-structuring qualitative content analysis. A total of 33 school actors (students, teachers, parents) participated. The two central findings emerged due to marginal rights and a limited understanding of student participation based on democracy learning. First, despite the demand for greater participation in school improvement, students remain dependent on individual actors and can only assert their interests within school objectives and not against the interests of the teachers or the school management. Second, participation within the framework of school development promotes not so much the strengthening of pupils as subjects as the strengthening of the identity of the school’s organization. The individual case study is thus a hypothesis-generating example of how the depoliticized participation rhetoric of imparting democratic competencies leaves the claim to equal consideration of students’ perspectives unfulfilled and ultimately prevents the redistribution of rights of disposal