One of the most effective ways to deepen your understanding of the student experience is to pair a student survey with a fishbowl. The student survey will provide a broad set of quantitative data about student well-being and engagement that can indicate ways in which students are excelling and ways they may be struggling. It won’t, however, tell us why. For this, we benefit from qualitative research methods. In a fishbowl discussion, students are inside the “fishbowl” actively discussing a topic while the adults are outside the “fishbowl” actively listening. Using findings from the survey, the fishbowl can help us make sense of data that may otherwise be opaque, surfacing root causes and making solutions more obvious. With the soundbites and quotes it generates, a fishbowl can also make the data more accessible and impactful to your community.

Elevating Student Voice with Quantitative and Qualitative Data

1. Administer Survey: Students take the Challenge Success Student Survey

2. Debrief Survey Results with Challenge Success: Challenge Success presents your school with a dashboard of data. Challenge Success and your school collaboratively identify the salient, unanswered questions that arose. 

3. Host Student Fishbowl: Challenge Success facilitates a 45-minute Student Fishbowl with 5-8 students to address the previously unanswered questions. The session is either held live in front of faculty and staff or it is recorded and later shared with the faculty and staff.

4. Invite Faculty Reflection: At a faculty or departmental-level meeting, faculty and staff reflect on insights from the Student Fishbowl and identity applications to their own practice. This session can be led by a Challenge Success team member for an additional charge.

“The fishbowl is a powerful tool for giving students a voice. The student responses were insightful and reasonable. I look forward to sharing the data during PLC conversations and at our Parent Night.”

MIDDLE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR

Challenge Success offers limited financial assistance based on need. Click here to apply.