Empowering Student Agency


“Agency is about students having more control over their learning – its about action and control.” - Roger Holdsworth, Honorary Associate of the Youth Research Centre at The University of Melbourne


Have you ever thought about how your students learn and why? Do you take a step back and observe your students when they’re having deep discussions about the learning objectives? Is a student-centred approach your preferred method of teaching? Then student agency might be important to you too!


What is ‘Student Agency’?

Agency can be an interesting term to understand when it comes to young learners. I love what TeacherMagazine.com has defined it as: When students are encouraged and enabled to be actively engaged in making decisions about their learning, this is agency. (TeacherMagazine.com - https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/how-student-voice-has-evolved-over-time)


When I first started teaching it was all about explicit teaching and giving information to students. Students were learners but it was more focused on scaffolding for the students to easily consume learning objectives. Although explicit lessons are a part of learning, students have the capability to become more engaged and drivers in their learning. 


Why is it important?

“If what you’re learning doesn’t relate to who you are, then there’s no place for you to store that information. There’s no way to understand it. That’s neurologically proven… And in terms of basic human respect – if there’s no effort on the part of the teacher to make what you’re doing relevant to students, then you’re not recognizing students as people. They’re just a set of checkboxes to you.” - Mr. Abdu’l-Karim Ewing-Boyd (InspiredTeaching.org - https://inspiredteaching.org/what-is-student-agency/)


The past few years of my teaching career I have focused more on a more student-centred approach to teaching.  I have also experimented with lessons that provided student agency. Through these I have observed more student engagement, stronger learning objective retention, students thinking more critically to deepen their learning. I think student agency is important because it ensures that every year, every lesson, I evolve as a teacher through self-reflection, provide lessons relevant to the students (not the teacher) and assist my students to become world learners. Students develop their skills of critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, persistence/resilience and challenging the world around them. 


How I Empower Student Agency

Here are some tasks that I incorporate in my classroom to empower student agency. I will be posting more about some of these ideas with further elaboration.

  • Re-Inventing Rotations 
  • Surveying Students for Opinions and Interests
  • Letting Students Drive the Lessons
  • Focus on Collaboration 
  • Allow for Creativity and Individuality with Projects/Tasks
  • Changing the Learning Environment 
  • Student Self-Reflection


Resources for Further Research

Blog Posts:

Some books that spark my interest:

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