The Framework for Building Agency

INTRODUCTION

Why a Book on Agency?

Conversations about how to best prepare students for their yet-to-be-known futures almost always involve an educator chiming in with, “We need to increase student agency.” The line is said with such confidence that most within earshot nod in agreement. However, when pushed to further define or describe what they mean by agency, rarely do educators have a clear idea of what it looks like or sounds like in a school or classroom. Often the answers involve phrases like:

• “Putting learners in control of their learning” • “Giving them voice and choice” • “Students’ having more autonomy”

When asked how those phrases are realized in the classroom, educators slow their uniform nodding, and their expressions shift from confident acceptance to perplexed uncertainty. K–12 educators are not alone in this struggle to define agency. Researchers Eugene Matusov, Katherine von Duyke, and Shakhnoza Kayumova (2016) stated, “Scholars who use the concept of agency do not define or operationalize it” (p. 420). If even experts leave the concept undefined, how can we expect practitioners in the classroom to know what agency is or how to encourage its development?

Unfortunately, the lack of clarity or complete misunderstanding of what agency is has led to poor practices in our classrooms. I have heard educators proudly share that they have “given agency” to students because they have left students to “figure it out.” Dana L. Mitra (2009), professor of education at Penn State University and author of numerous books on student voice and leadership, uncovered a misconception among educators that increasing students’ sense of control means adults must simply “get out of the way” (as cited in Toshalis & Nakkula, 2012). Under this belief, students can learn what they want when they want and share it how they want. However, this approach does not account for educators’ need to proactively monitor learning and intervene when a learner is confused or heading down the wrong path. In the name of agency, students might spend the entire day in front of a computer working through an online curriculum. While virtual options for the inputting of information offer value, they need to be accompanied by means of review, feedback, discussion, and reflection if the learner is to truly build agency. In some purportedly learner-centered classrooms, teachers sit at their desks waiting for students to come to them with questions, never rising to give the learners a reason to wonder or to provide the learners with feedback in a moment of decision making. Is this building agency in the learners? Some educators may answer yes—the students can move through the curriculum at their own pace, moving back and forth between activities and videos, rewinding when necessary to capture a description one more time. However, there is more to developing agency than simply allowing students to determine the pace of their learning.

Shane J. Lopez (2013), a psychologist, research director for the Don Clifton Strengths Institute, and senior scientist for Gallup, argued that agency is a core competency of the type of person that educators want students to become. Expanding on his research, one can think of agency as the perceived ability of the individual, based on his or her capacity, to shape his or her life. This definition has two parts. The first is perceived ability. A learner must believe that he or she is capable. I refer to this as the mindset of agency. Humans do not develop agency because someone has told them they can do something. They have to experience the success for themselves. They have to know they

successfully completed a similar task in the past and, if they attend to it, they will succeed again. This leads to the second part of the definition: based on capacity. The learner needs to have the skill set required to be successful. Just believing you can do something, while important, is not enough.

In this definition, learners must be active participants in the learning opportunity by making decisions, designing solutions, and testing hypotheses, since it is their experiences that shape how they respond. Two students sitting in the same class will have different experiences. Paraphrasing a sentiment often shared by Ralph W. Tyler (2013), a former professor of education at the University of Chicago, one learner might be engaged in the lesson while the other is thinking about a basketball game. Lopez (2013) expanded on the profoundly individual nature of agency:

As “agents,” we know we can make things happen (or stop them from happening), and we take responsibility for moving toward our goals . Over time, we develop our ability to motivate ourselves; we build our capacity for persistence and long-term effort . Agency makes us the authors of our lives . (p . 25)

Teachers must create learning opportunities that require the learner to be active, apply the knowledge gained, and work with others to solve problems faced by the community. Schools should strive to become the place where learners practice being the authors of their lives and reflecting on what they did or did not do to reach the goals they set at the beginning of the learning opportunity.

To begin creating learning opportunities that allow learners to develop agency, teachers must understand they cannot give agency to someone else. People have to develop it within themselves. Agency centers on the individual’s belief in his or her own power to successfully overcome obstacles that arise. For example, a clerk at a coffee shop will not develop agency in her job if her supervisor is continuously micromanaging or making her feel that there is only one right path to accomplishing her tasks. This form of management will slow or stall innovative approaches to customer service. New and more effective processes will lie undiscovered because the employee does not have agency to wonder about better ways of performing tasks, to try different strategies, and to see the success. The same can be said for students. Therefore, schools need to create the conditions that allow learners to develop agency in themselves. Classrooms, learning opportunities, and assessments must give learners the chance to practice taking control, making decisions, reflecting on the outcomes, and adjusting plans to ensure they are meeting the intended learning outcomes, all while under the watchful eye of a more knowledgeable person. Schools need to reduce the focus on ritualistic compliance, where the adult alone controls the classroom and the learning activity, and instead become zones of agency development.

Some 21st century education innovations that encourage educators to focus on developing the whole child, rather than accepting a single standardized test score as a measure of student potential, are a step in the right direction. The use of effective instructional strategies recommended by neuroscientists and cognitive scientists is encouraging. The commitment to social-emotional learning in service of developing students who can cope with life’s challenges is a positive trend. The robust conversation about personalized competency-based education begins to put the learner at the center of every decision, including curricular ones. There is a caution, however: some recommendations are filled with empty words that do not actually offer a pathway forward. For example, social-emotional learning cannot be taught through worksheets. While teachers need to expose learners to what social-emotional learning is and model how to use the strategies, it is the student who solidifies his or her understanding by using the strategies in a situation that requires adequate use of the skill. Holding educators accountable for preparing students for their futures necessitates a clear vision and an actionable plan.

While teachers do an excellent job of hearing the voices of their learners and collecting their thoughts, acting on student input becomes the tricky part. Whether teachers’ lack of action is intentional (such as telling students their ideas can’t work in the real world) or unintentional (such as becoming busy and letting student requests slip to the back burner), the message to students is the same: “Your opinion does not matter, and authority always wins.” If the purpose of school is preparing students to manage the world they will encounter, educators need to ensure they

listen to students’ ideas and implement them when possible. This action alone will go a long way toward building agency in students.

So, is there a right mix of teacher-controlled and learner-centered approaches and strategies? Where is the balance between providing authoritarian instruction and simply getting out of the way? The argument that educators must choose either a teacher-centered classroom approach or a learner-centered one is built on the false dichotomy that only one entity— the teacher or the learner—must be in control. This binary choice must come to an end. We need to realize the proper place on the continuum of control will vary for each student and each learning task. Some students will need more support from a teacher on a given topic, while others will need less. Then, as learning continues, different students will need assistance while others practice more independently.

How can we allow learners to be active in their learning and have their voices heard while also maintaining the structures necessary for classroom control? How can we create learning opportunities that provide all learners a chance to practice and develop the skills of thinking while also ensuring they are mastering all the content? These are questions that, with proper planning and a proper framework, educators can address.

Education That Builds Agency

My approach to designing learning opportunities to build student agency began in a much less structured attempt. In an effort to foster agency development, I encouraged the teachers in the school where I was principal to create project-based units. I supplied a unit-planning template that followed the theories and processes of project-based learning, as defined by the Buck Institute for Education. The Buck Institute for Education had, after all, written the book on projectbased learning (PBLWorks, n.d.).

One day in November, following a staff meeting, a teacher approached me and informed me that she “hated my little boxes.” This teacher was not typically skeptical of new ideas—she was a member of the team that was pioneering project-based learning and had an incredible ability to connect with students and get them to read, think, and create.

I looked at her and smiled politely and asked, “You hate my little boxes?”

She smiled back but confidently restated, “I hate your little boxes.”

I was happy that I had created an environment where people were comfortable and willing to share their true feelings. But I had to admit to her that I had no idea what she was talking about. “What boxes?” I wondered openly.

“The ones on your planning tool. They simply lock me into preparing units that are not organic.”

I let her know that was not my intention. She then said, “I want to do the James Beane model of curriculum integration.”

I was unfamiliar with that approach.

She came back the next day and handed me a copy of James Beane’s book that explained the theory (Beane, 1997). That summer, I did what many good administrators do and engaged in some personal professional development. For me, that meant heading to the beach—with book in hand, of course. As I turned the pages, I was intrigued by what James Beane was arguing. His ideas connected with the primary components of the Buck Institute’s approach to project-based learning—the elements that supported the engagement and conceptual development that made it so successful. As I finished, I had a hypothesis that, when further studied, led to the creation of my framework for building agency. My hypothesis was that learning experiences that develop student agency—whether they are based on project-based learning, the James Beane model, phenomenon-based learning, service-based learning, or any other model— have five similar components: (1) a classroom culture that encourages agency; (2) a way to trigger wonder; (3) well-defined learning goals; (4) an application of the knowledge gained in the unit; and (5) reflection before, during, and after learning.

These components guide teachers as they create learning opportunities that foster student agency. Their strength is that they form a flexible, multifaceted approach to education that emphasizes students and their learning. While the model still asks teachers to be deliberate in their planning of the five components, it is designed to allow teachers to choose the outcome they deem most appropriate for their

content and teaching style. To use a metaphor, chemists tried for some time to determine what made a diamond different from charcoal. What chemical element was responsible for turning a lump of carbon into a magnificent diamond? Sir Humphry Davy, a chemist whose early work included the isolation of sodium and potassium, discovered the difference was not a single additional element, but an underlying structural change (Siegfried, 1966). We can think of education in the same way. Improving student learning is not about identifying a single program or the magic element that will transform a decent and useful school into a gem. It is about an underlying structural change—one that shifts from a focus on teaching to a focus on learners and learning, the result of good teaching. School can no longer be about what the teacher is doing with the essential knowledge. It must be about what the learner will do to interact with the essential knowledge and build understanding.

Educators need to create the classroom conditions that allow students the opportunity to practice interdisciplinary problem solving and build a sense of agency, increasing their belief that they can—or that they will be able to, just maybe not yet. Overcoming the struggles associated with moving from not knowing something to then being able to demonstrate understanding of a concept or execution of a strategy without error is what gives people that feeling of accomplishment and the sense that problems are not something to avoid but a signal to work harder. Let your learners experience a state of desirable difficulty, the term cognitive psychologist Robert Bjork coined to describe “tasks that make students’ brains work a little bit harder in the name of better long-term working memory” (Gooblar, 2014). When they overcome the difficulty and discover that success is possible, they will get a shot of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Firsttime success fires the dopaminergic pathway (UVA Psychology 5559: Evolutionary Neuroscience, n.d.), and when the learners find themselves in a similar situation at a future date, they will get the release in anticipation of successfully completing the task. The earlier release makes it more likely the learner will persevere and find the future solution. They believe they can and they will persevere to a resolution. Learning opportunities that allow students to practice overcoming obstacles in their learning pathway—desirable difficulties—lead to the development of important skill sets. This perceived ability, based on the capacity of the students, increases their sense of agency.

The components for building agency lead educators to use strategies that make learners think on obstacles and overcome the productive struggle. Educators should also monitor the strategies’ effects on the learners’ sense of success. Learners’ perception of their agency should increase, which then increases their hope. Gallup has shown that students’ sense of hope is a far better predictor of success than is their GPA or which school they attend (Busteed, 2014). If teachers intentionally create learning experiences that give learners the opportunity to practice the skill sets and mindsets of agency, they will increase in their hope.

On the surface, a school or classroom focused on building agency may seem no different from any other school or classroom. A casual glance in the window or a walkthrough might see students engaged in building foundational knowledge through lectures, videos, activities, discussions, debates, and the like. What differs is why the students are building this foundation and how the teacher is answering that question.

Unlike in a traditional classroom, students do not all work on the exact same assignment designed to help them develop the foundational skills and knowledge. The teacher does not always lecture the whole class from the front of the classroom. Students do not work in lockstep, waiting for the brightest students in the class to answer the questions or show the path forward. They do not all read the same chapters from the text and discuss them. They do not work toward the single goal of all students’ taking and hopefully passing a unit exam. They are not graded on the percentage of information they recall for the test.

In a classroom that builds agency, students work toward a knowledge application of their choosing, rather than a traditional assessment. While exams might still be used, they are one piece of evidence in the assessment portfolio of a student’s performance. When asked, students can tell you they are working to better understand a concept in social studies, physical education, English language arts, or civics. They explain they are improving in a skill in music, art, science, or another subject or group of subjects they are currently studying. They are able to tell you what they are doing to take in the necessary information, data, or skills and what they are doing to demonstrate their

understanding or ability to execute a skill; each learner’s answer is different depending on the pathway he or she has chosen in response to an activity that triggered his or her curiosity. This is not to say that students move in all different directions. They all work on the same learning targets, just in different ways. The teacher still lectures to deliver important information, but only to those students who need it. The teacher is then free to work with individual students and small groups to help them process the information to generate the knowledge they need to answer driving questions. The teacher assesses to gather evidence of performance and is ready to provide feedback based on what each learner needs to move from not knowing to knowing to being able to demonstrate understanding. This is a classroom where students have a say in how the learning unfolds.

As an example, fourth graders choose an animal and use one of the animal’s adaptations to design an article of clothing. To capture students’ interest at the start of the unit, the teacher shows examples of products developed from knowledge of animal survival. Then the students work on developing their understanding of animal adaptations and biomes, and the skill of creating arguments, which they will use to design a new product and create a marketing plan. High school students, while working on a unit involving historical research, choose a historical figure and describe how life would have been different without this figure’s accomplishments. Regardless of the historical figure chosen, the students will all work to develop the necessary skills associated with sources and research, generating claims, citing specific textual evidence to support analysis, and editing techniques.

These types of activities, while used in many schools, typically exist only as extra credit or enrichment. I argue that these could be everyday learning experiences. The framework for building agency will ensure students acquire the foundational knowledge and concepts they will need to be successful in the next step in their lives, whether that be college, career, or military service.

The Structure of This Book

The purpose of this book is to give teachers a framework they can use to apply the aforementioned components and develop robust learning opportunities that will place students into the state of desirable difficulty while they apply the knowledge gained during the unit of study. By the end of the book, you will be equipped to structure your units, lessons, and classroom in ways that help your students develop agency. Chapter 1 presents the framework for building agency and introduces a tool for planning units accordingly. Chapters 2 through 6 each explore a component of the framework in depth: classroom culture, the inquiry starter, learning targets, application of knowledge, and reflection. These chapters include an explanation of the component, why it is important, and how to enact it in the classroom. Each chapter begins with a question to ponder as you read and includes firsthand perspectives on the framework from teachers and students at schools where I was teacher, principal, or superintendent. As you work your way through the book, you will encounter tools and worksheets at the end of each chapter that will ask you to apply the knowledge from the chapter. Collectively, these interactive tools will build an instructional unit based on the framework for building agency.

This book is not a policy book. It does not suggest changes to state or provincial accountability measures or a complete reform of the education system. While these are worthy causes and reforms are needed, both lie beyond the scope of this book. Instead, this book is about reorganizing what educators do in a way that will give the learners more control over their own thinking. It is about creating opportunities for thinking so students can build the confidence to persevere. Simply teaching the knowledge embedded in state or provincial standards to the point of memorization minimizes students’ potential to become thinkers. While this book presents example strategies for each component, it does not provide an exhaustive list of possible instructional strategies. Rather, this book lays out an organizing framework for how teachers can deliberately plan agency-building instructional practice. My hope is the book will add to the pool of knowledge about schools that promote agency and encourage other practitioners and researchers to expand and enhance the framework for building agency with more tools educators can use to plan for the development of agency in all their learners. That journey begins with chapter 1, which will develop your understanding of learning opportunities that build agency and present an overview of the organizing framework.

CHAPTER 1

The Framework for Building Agency

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

—ARISTOTLE

I never considered myself to be the best student or even a good student. But it was not until my senior year in high school that I came to realize what that meant. While I was focused on my schoolwork enough to maintain the points for a decent grade, I would easily find something to distract myself that kept me from going the extra step. I was not lazy or even uninterested. I just always had something on my mind I needed to work out before delving into my studies. Once, I decided to head to the library to focus on my reading so I could be prepared for my English class. I had my book, notebook, highlighter, and blue and black pens. I was going to take the best notes. I found a study carrel by the home improvement section. This should have been a good spot as my teenage self was not in need of any improvements to a home that I did not own. But what about the light system I wanted to build for my band? That would make us seem even more rock and roll. As hard as I tried, I could not stop thinking about how to wire the circuit. One quick glance at a book and I should be good. A few hours later, my notebook was full, my pens were used, I knew how to calculate the load per switch, and I had created a schematic to build the lighting system. This distraction would cause a less-than-perfect grade in American literature but fuel a passion that would ultimately lead to my decision to study electronics in college and accept a job in research and development for NASA. Well-intentioned adults told me I needed to get top grades in school, attend an Ivy League college, and get a high-paying job. What seemed like a deal breaker for that future—a C in American literature— was actually a blessing. That was not my dream. Instead, I earned average grades in school, found time to follow my passions, and sought learning experiences that would feed those passions.

When I became a teacher, I found myself repeating the same lines that adults had fed to me as a student: get good grades and get into a good college. I quickly realized, however, that the students who sat in front of me would follow their own paths. They do not all share the same desires, passions, interests, or wants. They all find meaning in different ways. Simply sitting down with a group of students will show anyone just how different they are. I am glad the world has diverse interests, passions, and talents. About three months into my teaching career, I came to realize that my job was not to teach science facts that students need to get high scores on tests. It was about giving them opportunities to develop the mindsets and skill sets that make people successful at whatever they choose to do. My science units needed to become opportunities for students to practice those skills that will set them apart from others. That is when I began discovering

how to construct learning opportunities that develop a person’s sense of control over life. That is what led to the framework for building agency.

In this chapter, I will present the framework for building agency and discuss the importance of providing students the opportunity to demonstrate their learning through active means.

QUESTION TO PONDER

How do I structure my classroom and the learning opportunities I provide so that I follow the assigned curriculum and also allow the learners to make decisions and reflect on their outcomes to determine whether they made the right choices?

What Is Agency, and Why Is It Important?

Despite all the discussion and debate about what will ensure learners are ready for life and work— more testing or less testing, whole-language or phonics, discovery learning or a return to basics, personalized learning or whole-group instruction, proficiency-based report cards or letter grades, learning management systems or gradebooks—the critical reform in education is not a specific grading system, or a piece of technology, or flexible pacing. All of these change the method of learning, but not the outcome. For true change, educators need to intentionally create learning opportunities that put students in situations of desirable difficulty and allow them to use the mindsets and skill sets of agency to make decisions, solve problems, and explain their thinking. The outcomes of learning opportunities designed to build agency achieve the desired result of helping students better understand themselves as learners. What did they do to get around the obstacles they encountered on their pathway to understanding the topics being studied? What did they do when they first discovered they did not know something? Were they tempted to give up? What strategies did they use to keep themselves going? What support did they need and get from others to help understand the issues and find a solution? These are the skills and mindsets they will need—in addition to reading, writing, and numeracy skills—as they maintain control of their lives. Stephanie M. Jones and Jennifer Kahn (2017), who coauthored the Aspen Institute’s report The Evidence Base for How We Learn, stated:

Students who have a sense of belonging and purpose, who can work well with classmates and peers to solve problems, who can plan and set goals, and who can persevere through challenges—in addition to being literate, numerate, and versed in scientific concepts and ideas— are more likely to maximize their opportunities and reach their full potential . (p . 4)

Setting goals, creating a plan to reach those goals, working with others to find the information to solve the problem, and overcoming obstacles to reach the desired outcome will give learners the power of hope by building their sense of agency.

Agency—as defined for the purpose of this book— is the perceived ability of the individual, based on his or her capacity, to shape his or her life. This requires someone to make choices, reflect on the outcomes of those choices, and determine what needs to happen next to continue making progress on the chosen pathway toward the intended goal. In schools, this can look like a kindergartener deciding how a character should be represented in his story even if it seems unconventional. A third grader creating and following a standard operating procedure instead of always needing the teacher to tell her when and how to perform certain routines. The middle school student who decides he needs to work on the skill of organization, so he begins tracking his behavior with a chart and reporting his progress to himself and the teacher. A high school student choosing to take a six-week learning opportunity that focuses on historical fiction of the American Revolution and analyzing how the work represents the time frame. These types of learning experiences will lead to adults who know how to set goals, plot pathways from their current selves to desired future selves, and feel secure in their mindsets and skill sets to overcome obstacles.

As explained in the introduction (page 1), agency includes both mindset and skill set. It is something that people must develop within themselves; teachers