Student Agency

Agency is defined by Martin (2004) as the capability of people to make choices and to act on their choices in ways that make a difference in their lives. In education, agency can be seen as when students feel they can influence their own learning and have some control over what is happening around them (Garrity, 2015; Ministry of Education, 2016 and 21st Century Learning Reference Group, 2014).

After completing a MindLab assignment around student agency and discovering this blog it has clarified my thoughts around agency. Over the past few years as a school we have been working towards student voice and agency in the classroom. Most of the time this is implemented through a choice-based system or a 'menu of options'. After reading Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey's entry on www.personalizelearning.com (fantastic blog!) I was caused to question wether we really are giving agency and choice to our students. Bray and McClaskey include a great infographic explaining the different styles of agency. I feel we are still working at the 'participant' stage most of the time and I would really like to move past this in our classroom. However research clearly states (see below) that agency is a skill that must be taught not expected. Therefore I have decided in term one I will create programmes that encourage children to operate mainly at the participant stage. After a few weeks of this style of learning I would like to move to Co-Designer to get student feedback on the activities provided and give them a chance to design their own activities too. My hope is over the year the students will build towards being designers of their own learning. I tried this stage through passion projects/what floats your boat? last year which the children loved. I am looking forward to doing this again, maybe towards the end of term two. My hope is as a class we can develop learning opportunities together with the children to reflect what they are passionate about. My questions at this stage are:

How does this fit with our school-wide inquiry/topic based curriculum?

If this is to be an 'extra' learning experience on top of school driven inquiry topics when is time set aside for this? I would prefer it to be integrated throughout our day rather than becoming another 'subject'.

Notes from my research:

Role of ICT

Researchers (Beauchamp & Kennewell, 2010; Charles, Burt, & Williams, 2010; Lantz-Andersson, 2008 and Robinson & Sebba, 2010) agree that technology and digital devices provide a platform to personalise learning. Through their case studies Charles, Burt & Williams (2010) describe how students access web-based technology to share their learning and ideas through blogs, KidPix, iMovie and Hyperstudio. The researchers found students were more engaged in this style of learning as they had ownership over what they wanted to learn about and had more choice over how to present their learning.

Role of Teachers

The change from teacher to facilitator is not an easy one as Martinez, & Mcgrath (2014) discuss. While technology can play a role in facilitating there are three key aspects to the role of teachers in facilitating agency. Firstly, teachers need to feel confident in releasing ‘control’ over education in order to facilitate student agency (Bishop, Berryman, Tiakiwai, & Richardson, 2003). Teachers need to move from being deliverers of curriculum content to facilitators and co-constructors of learning (21st Century Learning Reference Group, 2014). Through the integration of web-based technology teachers can enable students to access other forms of knowledge such as experts, videos, websites and tutorials to learn from. The role of the teacher here is to create pathways for the students to access knowledge not provide the knowledge for the student. This increases agency for students as they have choice over how to receive knowledge and skills. Chan et al. states students need to be explicitly taught the skills to make choices, especially at a primary school level. Bray & McClaskey (2015) state as learners increase responsibility and the ability to clearly share their voice teachers can develop a process that builds ownership as learners move towards agency. Chan et al. argue that children need to develop the ability to self-regulate in order to make the most appropriate choice when driving their own learning. This helps learners access the most useful information to meet their learning need. The role of the teacher is to teach these skills through modelling and carefully developed tasks to enable true agency in their learners.

Different perceptions of levels of choice and student agency.

Perceptions of choice vary greatly from school to school, learner to learner and teacher to teacher. Garrity (2015) and Bray & McClaskey (2015) discuss the importance of meaningful choices for learners. Bray & McClaskey (2015) argue that if students are choosing from a computer programme or list of options from a teacher then the teacher is ultimately the one driving the learning not the learner. Researchers found some teachers view choice as empowering the students to change fonts or colours in the presentation of their ideas while others promoted more choice through a wider range of web-based tools such as creating videos, presentations or blogs that include an aspect of viewer interaction (Robinson & Sebba, 2010 and Garrity, 2015).