Learner agency

 

Engagement, focus, participation. 

Listening, contributing, collaborating. 

Flow, drive, passion. 

 

Reflect, grow, develop. 

Life long learning.

These are keywords are at the heart of what teachers do and why we do what we do. Yet as most teachers will recognise, the day to day realities can feel so much farther from the ideal.

It feels that often majority of our students are only at school because they have to be and lack the skills or ability to be self-motivated in their learning. Thus, this often leads to the top-down approach; or policeman approach in teaching and learning. We try and make kids 'do the tasks' but then your left scratching your head - is this really what we are on about? Is this really achieving what we want it to achieve?

Student or learner agency is one such approach that looks at tackling some of these endemic issues. Student agency can be defined as the capacity to set a goal, reflect and act responsibly to effect change. After reading the  OECD’s Conceptual Learning Framework for Student Agency, this quote really stood out to me. Student agency is about acting rather than being acted upon; shaping rather than being shaped; and making responsible decisions and choices rather than accepting those determined by others.'

If we are truly honest - much of what happens in the learning space - happens to students. They are being acted upon, they are being told what learning will take place and when. The adults are determining what the students need to learn and in what sequence.

What are the benefits of student agency? According to the research, student agency will increase motivation to learn and will learn the skill of 'how to learn'. It has also shown to help facilitate overcoming adversity and reducing some of the gaps between the advantaged and disadvantaged students. 

The So What?

What does this actually look like in the classroom? I guess that is one thing I find frustrating about many of these articles - is that they have the research and big ideas - but rarely fail to address the realities of the classroom. How does a teacher go about implementing any of these ideas, when most learners do not have a sense of agency and many are also dealing with significant behaviour issues. How does a teacher go about co-constructing learning with a few students, when the rest need to be carefully monitored? Are teachers being asked to use some of their off-class time to do this co-constructing? How does one facilitate student agency with a prescriptive syllabus and curriculum that is already hard to effectively within the timing constraints? How do you support individualised student agency when you are one teacher and there are 30 students?

For me, I work in a 2:60 model - this does allow a bit more flexibility in how teachers are used in the space. Again, it is easy to consider how we might co-construct with our already engaged and motivated learners - but how does this look with our disengaged learners or the ones with significant learning difficulties? I am intrigued about this idea - any maybe it is like a lot of ideas - you have to start small. Big doors swing on small hinges. Maybe next term I take one or two lessons and try and co-construct them with some students from the class - perhaps not just my already motivated ones. What if they helped design the lessons? What if they even helped implement the lessons? What if they were part of a reflective session to evaluate the lesson and its outcomes? I can see the potential impact of this approach. I just find it difficult to see a way forward with all the other responsibilities that teachers need to juggle on a daily basis. But I guess one reason why we are teachers is that we are people of hope and change.