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Over 150 people from all over the country will converge on Cambridge's Faculty of Education to commemorate Jean Rudduck and Donald McIntyre, both of whom held the position of Professor of Education at the ̽»¨Ö±²¥.

̽»¨Ö±²¥occasion will also mark the launch of a major study on why teachers and schools should take ‘pupil voice' seriously, which the pair completed shortly before their deaths in 2007.

Improving Learning through Consulting Pupils, published this week, gathers findings from almost twenty different enquiries conducted over five years. These involved hundreds of teachers and pupils. Its recommendations have been tried out in classrooms across a wide range of different schools.

Professor Rudduck and her colleagues were pioneers in the field of ‘pupil voice'. They first published in this area in the mid-1990s. At the time their work was considered a novelty, as few schools were involved in the area. A decade on, Ofsted routinely asks pupils for their views and a Children's Commissioner for England has been appointed, to put forward the views of young people to government.

Improving Learning through Consulting Pupils highlights four major advantages which can flow from the use of pupil consultation: a more positive sense of learning, better relationships with teachers, a stronger sense of pupils' own agency in learning and greater opportunities for reflection on learning.

Most initiatives in this area have come from teachers, though the government has funded some small-scale projects.

̽»¨Ö±²¥authors plot a five stage course through which schools need to travel before they engage with pupils to the greatest effect. Most schools are about halfway there; they understand the need to engage with their students but are uncertain about the best ways to do so. ̽»¨Ö±²¥book offers them numerous ways of taking their agendas forward.

Professor Jean Rudduck was one of the founding members of the Centre for Applied Research in Education at the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of East Anglia, one of the most influential educational research centres in the English-speaking world.

In 1994, she became Director of Research at Homerton College, Cambridge, and was subsequently elected President of the British Educational Research Association (BERA). She played a major role in the developments which led to the creation of the new Faculty of Education in 2001. In 2002 she became Professor of Education at Cambridge. She died of cancer in March 2007.

Donald McIntyre became Professor of Education at Cambridge in 1996. He was also one of the main architects of the new faculty at Cambridge. Amongst other posts, he too headed BERA and held posts as Reader in Education at both Stirling and Oxford Universities. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Edinburgh and Dundee Universities for his work in the discipline. He died of a heart attack in October 2007.

̽»¨Ö±²¥event is free and open to all. It will take place from 5-7pm on Monday 21 January at the Faculty of Education on Hills Road.