In reading through the literature I have collected so far for my driving question about student agency, the big ideas that are surfacing have to do with the relationship and dialogue between teachers and students and the locus of power in making decisions in the classroom setting. In an article titled, Descriptive Feedback: Student Voice in the K - 5 Classroom, the author Carol Rodgers focuses on student voice as she studies a dialogic process she calls “descriptive feedback” to explain how students develop agentive language to talk about learning. She studied a group of elementary age students and their teachers who asked them a series of questions over a period of several weeks. The students were able to express what helped them learn and what got in their way. Through the process, they were able to more clearly articulate what they needed as a learner or when they felt successful. The teachers also began to expand their questioning as they became more curious about the responses they were receiving from students. Rodgers found that the process “strengthened students’ awareness of their own and each other’s learning, strengthened their ability to express themselves, and heightened their sense of agency in the classroom.”
The American Library Association Journal published an article by Philip William titled, Student Agency for Powerful Learning. It defines student agency as having a strong sense of efficacy “when they [students] are empowered to take strategic steps to accomplish their goals.” The author discusses the pedagogical stance necessary to building a strong sense of efficacy by giving students authentic choices where their choices have a “real impact on themselves and the world around them.” The article emphasizes the importance of identity as students develop a sense of who they are as a learner - likes and dislikes, what motivates them and interests them, etc. The author encourages giving students choices in their reading and giving them opportunities to explore their questions and passions. He claims that students will work harder and challenge themselves to go deeper when they have a strong sense of efficacy and agency.
In an article titled Agency and Expanding Capabilities in Early Grade Classrooms, the author Jennifer Keys Adair looks at primary classrooms as the foundation for developing student agency by giving students multiple opportunities to expand what they can do and learn for themselves. She studied several students in their classroom environment where they were able to help determine unit topics, explore and plan with their peers, and engage in open-ended tasks. She found that many teachers were resistant to this approach thinking that students were too young to manage themselves with less control. The author observed the work of several students over time as they were allowed to make decisions about how to solve a problem or experiment for answers to a question. She found that the students not only gained content knowledge but developed new capabilities such as organizational skills, writing and graphing, building with tools, collaboration with peers, etc. Adair concludes that “agency needs to be a key component of early grade classrooms to help young children, particularly those from marginalized communities, reach their full potential.”
From the pedagogical perspective on student agency, most articles cite the seminal work of John Dewey in the area of experiential learning and reflection. He talks about the “learner within” and wrote, ‘‘The moment children act they individualize themselves; they cease to be a mass and become the intensely distinctive beings that we are acquainted with out of school, in the home, the family, on the playground, and in the neighborhood’’ (Dewey 1915). Another authority that supports the idea of student agency is Paolo Freire and his ideas that education can have a humanizing effect on students or not. Or in other words, learning based on student agency gives a voice to the student as opposed to the banking model of education. (Freire, 1972). From the learning perspective, a seminal work on agency comes from psychologist Albert Bandura of Stanford University who literally wrote the book on what human agency is in social cognitive theory. Agency or “the capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one’s life is the essence of humaness.” (Bandura, 2001). The belief is that the stronger the sense of self-efficacy, the greater the likelihood that an individual will exercise agency. Having choices grows confidence which leads to a greater degree of ownership and belief in the impact an individual can have. (Bandura 1997)
Prior to the pandemic, our work as a school site had focused significantly on giving students voice and choice through inquiry and the ways that students could demonstrate their understanding. Many of our essential agreements were about students sharing their thinking and being given opportunities to express themselves and use their creativity. We saw evidence that students were owning their learning and developing strong communication skills. But In the context of our current situation with students in distance learning, we see some students becoming more disengaged in the learning overall. We also see a trend in students losing confidence in what they can do for themselves. I believe that we’ve lost some ground with agency due to a number of factors: fatigue with online learning, significantly less collaborative time with peers, over dependence on parents at home, or lack of parent or caregiver support during school, etc. I believe that learning to foster student agency in our new reality will help us mitigate some of these factors moving forward. And I’m curious to see how students will respond to the strategies we put in place.