Including student voice in Chinese higher education classrooms: Possibilities and challenges of practicing a student-led pedagogical method

In China, traditional classrooms are believed to be teacher-centred, and lecturer-student relations are of a relatively high-power distance. Recent trends have witnessed initiatives by Chinese educators to make classrooms more student-centred and to make lecturer-student interactions more equal. However, this process has been slow and challenging as different, even opposing pedagogical values, epistemological traditions, and understandings of lecturer and student roles and relationships collide. This may be demonstrated more vividly when non-Chinese international students and faculty encounter local Chinese faculty and students in Chinese higher education (HE). Drawing on interviews with a non-Chinese international lecturer who initiated a student-led pedagogical method called the student voice for social justice (SVSJ) method in a mainland Chinese university and with her students, we explore how the lecturer and her students understand and experience this pedagogical method. Our findings show that despite some discrepancies in the lecturer’s and the students’ understandings of the theoretical or philosophical underpinnings of SVSJ, they all regard it as a pedagogical method which empowers students and diversifies the knowledge base in classrooms, achieving the philosophical aims of (re)distribution of knowledge, recognition of ‘the other’ as valuable members of the classroom, and representation of groups in educational processes. Despite these promising possibilities, the challenges observed still require careful reflection on participants’ social, cultural, and educational contexts when student-led pedagogies are implemented in Chinese classrooms or similar contexts. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s).