Australia: youth voice, creative pedagogy and teacher education

Curtin University. Project lead: Dr Sonja Kuzich, Dr Paul Gardner and Dr Carol Carter. The educational, policy and initial teacher education context will be developed with the country team, retaining local priorities and language.

Nine Millennium Kids participants—seven girls and two boys, mainly aged 15–18—joined a youth workshop at Curtin University on 15 March. The session used icebreakers, a gallery walk, positioning activities, rapid paired discussion, a yarning circle, image theatre, an education-election exercise and ‘leaves of advice’ for future teachers. Young people emphasised engaged and adaptable teachers, supportive relationships, student voice, collaborative learning, inclusion and belonging, wellbeing, assessment pressure, global uncertainty and the ethical use of AI.

• Amplify student voice through meaningful choice and participation.
• Honour and champion inclusion, equity, diversity and culture.
• Ensure engagement and safety through caring, compassionate and responsive relationships.
• Make curriculum and assessment more relevant to life beyond examinations.
• Strengthen critical thinking about AI, information, global uncertainty and ethical action.
• Support collaboration, belonging and adaptive teaching that responds to different learners.

University partner: Curtin University. Creative practitioners, youth organisations, schools and policy partners will be added as confirmed.

The youth workshop combined gallery walks, an imaginary positioning line, rapid paired discussion, a yarning circle, image-theatre tableaux, an education-election activity and ‘leaves of advice’ for future teachers. These multimodal, drama-based and dialogic methods enabled participants to move between personal experience, collective interpretation and proposals for change.

• Participants connected teacher engagement and adaptability with student wellbeing, motivation and belonging.
• Tableaux made classroom challenges and possible responses visible through collaborative, non-verbal problem-solving.
• The education-election and advice activities translated experience into recommendations for teacher education and policy.
• The session generated sticky notes, observation notes, audio, tableaux captions and collective discussion as complementary forms of evidence.

Methods, findings, publications and downloadable materials will be added with evidence status, language and attribution clearly labelled.