‘Learner agency’ – Is it really as simple as all that?
Jennifer Charteris
Dianne Smardon
Jennifer Charteris and Dianne Smardon
University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia
Whether you are in a school that is retaining single cell spaces, have remodelled, or purpose built an innovative learning environment, student ‘agency’ has gained traction as a ‘buzzword’. The notions of the 21st century learner, the use of mobile technologies, and innovative schooling design are influences that, when taken together, have led to a focus on relationships in classroom spaces. There is a spotlight on learner agency. What do we mean by learner agency? Is the model of the self-directed/ self-managing/ self-regulated learner with ‘choice and voice’ really the go? This is the view of agency where the learner knows the assessment for learning recipe, can follow teacher instruction, and is compliant with classroom norms and protocols. In this article we share a typology of agency we have developed through our research with Aotearoa principals (Charteris & Smardon, 2017). Agency can be thought about in different ways, as our typology indicates, and these differences have implications for teaching and learning. (See Table 1.)
We identify four forms of agency that can be seen in Aotearoa classrooms – sovereign, relational, ecological and new material. Firstly, there is agency associated with the sovereign self, an autonomous learner that has emerged from self-determination theory. We found that this was the most common interpretation of agency among the 38 Aotearoa school leaders in our case study. Typified by ‘choice and voice’, this account of agency privileges ‘empowerment’, and ‘student responsibility’, with little consideration given to socio-cultural factors and power relations in the learning environment. (This is elaborated below.) Secondly, there is relational agency – produced through sociocultural influences. Relational agency addresses ones’ capability to work with peers to ‘strengthen purposeful responses to complex problems’ (Edwards, 2011, p. 34). It involves interaction with others’ understandings and the integration of others’ perspectives into one’s decision making. Children work with their peers, understanding both the motives of others and the resources that together they bring to a shared task. We see relational agency in classes where teachers promote a lot of dialogue. Thirdly, we have ecological agency, which is a temporally embedded (time related) process of social engagement, where young people shape their actions in response to their learning contexts. This is where what we bring from the past, connects with the sociocultural resources in the present, and can be projected as a capacity to act in the future. In ecological terms, agency is built on past achievements, understandings and patterns of action with both short and long term considerations. As Priestley and colleagues point out (2012), ecological agency ‘varies from context to context based upon certain environmental conditions of possibility and constraint’ (p. 2). The beliefs, values and attributes that students mobilise in particular situations are important. Engagement with this sort of agency requires us to think about the children’s histories. How do beliefs, values and attributes generated in the past, influence students use of materials, involvement with people and approaches taken to learning in the circumstances of their current classroom? How can they be equipped emotionally, socially, culturally and physically to take future action as agentic learners in particular learning contexts? Ecological agency is located learning, at a point in time that feeds into a future purpose.
Table 1. A typology of agency Agency
Functional definitions
Associated Theories
Sovereign
Individual students can be provided opportunities by teachers to exert agency. It is possible to possess it. It is enacted through choice. It is intrinsic.
Cognitivism, Mindsets Self-determination theory
Relational
Relational agency is co-produced in spaces between people. It is dialogic and socially produced and consequentially is a dynamic that resides in social environments. It is therefore situational; located in the dynamic between extrinsic and intrinsic elements.
Socio-cultural theory
Ecological
Agency is a temporally embedded process of social engagement that is informed by the past, oriented to the future and enacted in the present.
Socio-cultural theory
New material
Agency is always in flux and flow – generated through a range of elements within schooling spaces. It is co-produced in relations, between humans and objects, and between humans.
New material theory
(Adapted from Charteris & Smardon, 2017 p. 6)
Finally, there is an emerging recognition that objects are measuring of their submission to what amounts to little more agentic and influence classroom spaces. As an example, ILE than coercive operations of power’ (McPherson & Saltmarsh, have the potential to support flexible pedagogy and prompt 2016, p.6). Student individuality and competitiveness is a rethinking of learner agency. We see the affordances of privileged, with each learner shaped as an economic unit and objects in learning spaces, influencing the sorts of learning objectified to meet the demands of a market economy. taking place – e.g. flexible furniture/moving walls influencing In the classroom, sovereign agency involves a relatively simplistic possibilities for individual, peer to peer, or group learning. In conception of power relations. Power is seen as a possession, another example, acoustics in poorly that teachers can deploy, give away, designed spaces negatively impact on We have heard of ‘ILE or take back. For example, we have student learning (and possibly teacher seen curriculum support materials nerves). Further, the agency of the refugees’, where teachers describing agency as ‘ownership’. This objects and structures in classroom a controlling stance, where agency have left schools because of isis something environments can prompt resistance that teachers can impart to ILE spaces. We have heard of ‘ILE redesigned spaces. to students, a form of empowerment refugees’, where teachers have left and responsibilisation. Subtleties of schools because of redesigned spaces. Objects are influential in resistance are ignored or negated and certainly not seen as a relationships. demonstration of agency. Furthermore, when agency is seen as responsibilisation, the Is there a problem with sovereign agency? onus is on learners to accept responsibility for themselves and Learner agency is seen as conducive to 21st century learning and participate in acts of self-surveillance and control. Student choice the evolving pedagogy of ILE. Yet the notion, if unquestioned, becomes a ‘forced choice,’ as there are few options really but is problematic. Just as student voice becomes merely a ‘quality to conform, where the ‘chosen' line of action is really the only control’ manoeuvre, aligned with neoliberal moves to leverage possible action (Davies, 2000). school improvement, agency can be located in the same way. Agency is fraudulent when there is only a limited role for Sovereign agency is based on ‘individuals’ freedom of students to be significant stakeholders in the educative process expression, action and choice in the marketplace’ where they and there is little scope for their advanced status in classroom are ‘activated, responsibilised, individualised, moralised , and/or relations and schooling decision making. A robust conception freed’ (Miller, 2015, p. 350). The student as ‘autonomous agent’ of agency prompts us to move beyond low-level individualistic is a commodified conception of personhood where individuals conceptions of ‘managing self ’ to the recognition that learners ‘realise fulfilment brought about by continual monitoring and develop identities in relation to the material, temporal, relational
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and spatial dimensions of classrooms. Possibilities for democratic About the Authors participatory pedagogy and agency may be reduced to rhetoric if Dr Jennifer Charteris is a teacher educator with teaching experience the focus on students as sovereign selves remains a primary focus. in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. She has worked with students, It is timely to consider approaches to agency, with the teachers, principals, school communities and school in-service advisors prominence it has in our current parlance. In writing this piece, across the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. Her doctoral research we recommend an expanded consideration of agency that was in the area of learner agency. As an in-service teacher educator with the University of Waikato, Jennifer provided professional learning for recognises relational, ecological and new material dimensions. principals and teachers that aimed to raise This is in order to engage with a student achievement through targeted richer conception of pedagogy, We caution against a assessment for learning and culturally than one that focuses exclusively responsive pedagogies. She is currently on learner responsibilisation. The sovereign approach Senior Lecturer of School Pedagogy at the University of New England in Armidale various forms of agency position that places a focus on Australia. learners in different ways, and Ms Dianne Smardon is based in Hamilton influence approaches to teaching individual motivation and and undertakes contract work for the and learning. It is therefore important University of New England as a teacher unquestioned learner to understand the limitations of educator in Nauru. She led Assessment sovereign agency. responsibilisation. and Curriculum professional development We caution against a sovereign projects for teachers and school leaders in approach that places a focus on individual motivation and Aotearoa/New Zealand with the University of Waikato. She has worked unquestioned learner responsibilisation. These are ‘unsociological’ with school leaders and teachers as a consultant in Hong Kong. In and ‘de-politicised’ conceptions of learning (Istance & Kools, researching teacher education in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Pacific, 2013, p. 48). We suggest that the typology illustrated here may she has contributed to a range of research teams. She has published support teachers and leaders to avoid simplistic notions of ‘choice research articles on school leadership and systemic improvement though and voice’ to make explicit the nuances of agency in classroom collaborative peer coaching practices. settings. Acknowledgement The authors wish to thank the Principals across New Zealand who contributed to this research. References Charteris, J., & Smardon D. (2017). A typology of agency in new generation learning environments: emerging relational, ecological and new material considerations. Pedagogy, Culture and Society. Available at http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ AsDXs66xAJGFXi7tQcA3/full Davies, B. 2000. A body of writing 1990–1999. Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman & Littlefield. Edwards, A. (2011). Building common knowledge at the boundaries between professional practices: Relational agency and relational expertise in systems of distributed expertise. International Journal of Educational Research, 50(1), 33–39. Istance, D., & Kools, M. (2013). OECD Work on Technology and Education: innovative learning environments as an integrating framework. European Journal of Education, 48(1), 43–57. DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12017 McPherson, A., & Saltmarsh, S. (2016). Bodies and affect in nontraditional learning spaces. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1–10. DOI:10.1080/00131857.2016.1252904
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Miller, E. R. (2016). The ideology of learner agency and the neoliberal self. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 26(3), 348–365. DOI: 10.1111/ijal.12129
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The result is the Teaching and School Practices Survey that covers effective teaching practices, school practices and principal leadership, in a survey that takes teachers and principals around 10–15 minutes. Thanks to Ministry of Education support, use of the tool is free in Terms 2 and 3 each year. The principal leadership and school practices questions in the tool draw on four key strands of research, including collaborative leadership. ‘School principals sometimes feel pressure to be “heroic leaders”, but the research shows this model is not effective,’ Cathy Wylie said. Collaborative leadership enables continuous improvement and development and ensures that school leadership is sustainable. NZPF President Whetu Cormick encourages principals and
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References 1 Robinson, V., Hohepa, M., & Lloyd, C. (2009). School Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying what works and why. Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration [BES]. Wellington: Ministry of Education. https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/ series/2515/60169/60170 About the Author Cathy Wylie works on a number of long-running research projects, including the national surveys of primary, intermediate, and secondary schools that started with Tomorrow’s Schools in 1989. She leads the longitudinal study, ‘Competent Children, Competent Learners’, which has tracked subjects from early childhood to early adulthood. Cathy’s 2012 book Vital Connections: Why we need more than self-managing schools argues for better support across the education system to improve student outcomes. She sees leadership as a key factor in improving outcomes. Cathy led the development of the Teaching and School Practices Survey tool.
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